


The Life, Death, and Life (goddammit) of Clinton Francis Pennington Barton

by raiining



Category: Angel: the Series, S.W.A.T. (2003), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Hurt Locker (2008)
Genre: Anxiety, F/M, Fix-It, Graphic Violence, Jeremy Renner Character Combinations, M/M, Suicide, Torture, spoilers for Angel, spoilers for S.W.A.T., spoilers for The Hurt Locker, spoilers for the Avengers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-06 22:28:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1112258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raiining/pseuds/raiining
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a vampire, Penn was hated and feared.  As a human, he's mostly just hated.  It isn't an easy road to get from that to being an Avenger, but somehow, he manages.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Life, Death, and Life (goddammit) of Clinton Francis Pennington Barton

**Author's Note:**

> Whoot! I posted this before 2014!
> 
> *fits bumps the internet*
> 
> This fic has been a labour of hated love, and massive thank you's to everyone whose cheerleaded me through it. MASSIVE THANKS to Infiniteeight for not only beta'ing this more than once, but for being the person to tell me I can do better. I really, honestly appreciate that. All remaining mistakes are mine.
> 
> This fic is my attempt to combine several of Jeremy Renner's different roles into one complete character. It starts with the Vampire Penn from the TV series Angel, moves onto the movie S.W.A.T. and then the Hurt Locker, before ending with The Avengers. Familiarity with those plot points would be helpful but shouldn't be necessary to read the story.
> 
>  
> 
> Please note: this fic deals with issues of anxiety and repeated attempts of suicide. If this is distressing or triggering to you in any way, please do not read.

The thing about humans, was that they changed.

Penn had been human for twenty nine years, but he’d been a vampire for two hundred and fourteen. Whatever the soul was, whatever essential part of him had been lost when he'd died, it's absence had kept him static for all those centuries.

He’d learned. He’d adapted. He’d travelled the world and watched it change. But he, himself, what made Penn _Penn_ , that hadn’t altered.

Angelus had oh so helpfully pointed this out when they’d met for the last time. Penn had tried to shake things up a little, but, well – he’d never been smart. Changing the rules had gotten him killed. He should have run when he’d had the chance.

He hadn’t expected to come back. His death had been centuries overdue, and he’d had enough time to decide, before the end, that it’d be fun to laugh at his father burning in hell. He’d like to see the look on the bastard’s face.

Only Penn didn’t go to hell. He didn’t go anywhere. One moment he was dying, and then the next he was retching up bile in some dark, damp basement. He remembered nothing of the time in between except a brief pause, like the silence between stars. 

Penn blinked and looked up. There was a woman in a suit watching him. He snarled and leapt towards her, but lost his balance and fell. He felt weak – so _weak_. He sucked in a breath, and then retched again at the stale, rank taste. He automatically held his breath to avoid the stench, and then – terrifyingly! – felt his lungs burn for air. 

He coughed, forcing oxygen into his chest. He realized what he was doing and gasped. He was breathing! He was...

He put his hands on his skin. He could feel his heart beating, the rise and fall of his breast. His feet were cold and the air was chill. The truth dawned in his mind like a slowly rising sun.

He was human. He was human again. 

His heartrate increased, the rabbit-quick _bit-tata-bit-tata-bit-tata_ he had savoured for so long in his victims. Fear overwhelmed him. He was _human_. He had lost his demon, his power. He was nothing but the scared, weak thing Angelus had found centuries ago, the boy who'd lived in a constant state of fear.

“Welcome back, Mr. Penn,” said the woman in the suit.

Penn licked his lips and forced his voice not to shake. "Who are you?" 

The woman gazed back at him impassively, as if Penn were a specimen, an insect, something best left under a microscope. “We are the Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart. I believe you have heard of us.”

Penn had. He stilled. His fear escalated into terror. "What do you want with me?"

"Many things, Mr. Penn." 

Penn swallowed and looked away. He tried to master his feelings, but though Angelus had taught him many things, he'd never learned that. For a vampire, there’d been no need.

The room was dark and ill lit. His eyes took an age to adjust, but finally Penn could make out the chalk outline on the concrete floor. He stiffened and shuffled back. He didn’t want to know what would happen if he crossed that line.

The woman who watched him smiled. “Good. You are more practical than your Sire.”

Penn felt a chill deep in his chest that had nothing to do with the damp. “This is about Angelus?”

The woman shrugged. “Isn’t everything?” 

Penn felt anger flood him, momentarily washing away the fear. It took everything he had not to growl because, yeah, it fucking seemed that way sometimes.

The woman gave him a moment. She stared at him with her dark, human eyes. “I need you to tell me everything you remember about your Sire."

She didn’t make any threats, but she didn’t need to. Penn stayed in the centre of the circle and dutifully told her everything he knew. It took hours, and the questions kept coming. How old was Angel, exactly? When had he been turned and how? Who was Darla and why was she so important to him? What was it about her that made her special?

Penn cooperated in every way. He spilled all of Angel's secrets, holding nothing back. Darla had held no fear for him as a vampire, but now the memory of her terrified him. She had been powerful and deadly, one of the most vicious creatures of their time. To be a Childe of Darla was to possess rank and distinction, but more than that, it made one's demon strong. 

As a Childe of Angelus, Darla's favourite, Penn had possessed both wealth and distinction. He'd tried to carve his own name out in blood, but mostly floundered in Angelus's shadow. It didn't matter, because Angelus had been everything to him – an uncle, a brother, a father. A better father than his own had been, most of the time. For every instance of violence, there had been a moment of dark joy. 

Penn talked until he made himself hoarse, and when they brought him water he talked some more. By the time several hours had passed, he’d earned himself a set of clothes and a little food. He slept inside the magic circle. 

It was the first time he had slept in two hundred and fourteen years. He’d relaxed as a vampire, he’d even dreamed, but he hadn’t _slept _. Not like this. Not from exhaustion, not from weakness. His demon had given him power over such things.__

__He’d lost that power now._ _

__When he was not answering questions, Penn pondered ways to escape. He knew by now that Wolfram & Hart was building towards something, that he had only been the first pawn, the lab rat with which they had started their experiment. The more questions they asked him, the more obvious their true goals became._ _

__They wanted to bring Darla back and unleash her on the world._ _

__They wanted to unleash her on Angel._ _

__Penn wanted nothing but to get as far away from the possibility of Darla as he could. The woman in the suit sensed this. "What about her frightens you?" she asked. Penn didn't know what to say. They cared about Angel, not about him. They didn’t need to know that he trembled, that the fear that had lived in his breast his entire life was back and worse than ever. The memory of Darla, the thought of fangs... he shivered. He kept his eyes focused on the woman and away from the dark corners of the room. If he looked, he was half-convinced something would lunge._ _

__He couldn’t stay here. Alone in his circle, Penn hatched a plan for escape. He watched and finally, after almost a week, his guard relaxed enough that Penn could break the circle and run. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t as hard as it should have been. Wolfram & Hart let him go, and Penn knew that meant they were following him. They wanted to see what he would do._ _

__Penn didn’t plan on doing anything but running away. He met his contact outside of the city, the one he wouldn’t care if Wolfram & Hart knew about, and took enough cash to get him clear of the Americas. Wolfram & Hart followed, but they only sent one man. Penn understood. He was small fish and human now. Wolfram & Hart had nothing to fear from him._ _

__Aware of his tail, Penn went to Europe and re-learned how to be human. It was frightening. There were so many things that could hurt him. He avoided big men and enclosed locations, preferring to sit up high and watch people, re-learning their ways. He kept away from the dark._ _

__His fear grew. It was as if the more he ran from it, the worse it became. Penn didn't know how to fight it. He didn't know how to do anything but run from the fear, until one day he was walking back to his apartment. He had started avoiding streets, preferring to travel by rooftop, but two thugs found him before he could scale the side of his apartment building._ _

__“Hey! American! Give us your wallet.”_ _

__Penn stared at the men, frozen in fear._ _

__“You!” the first man shouted, the brass knuckles on his fist gleaming. “Your money. Now.”_ _

__Penn could do nothing. The man stepped forward, his weight on his front leg, and Penn moved on instinct. He ducked and spun, kicking out the man’s knee. The man bit off a curse and began to fall, and Penn smashed his heel into the man's solar plexus._ _

__The thug collapsed with an audible “oomph!”. Behind him, the second man startled. Penn caught the gleam of the revolver in his hand. He darted to one side, avoiding the first shot, and was in the man's face before he could clear the chamber for a second. Penn fainted with one hand, and was ready with an uppercut when the thug flinched. The gun dropped as his teeth snapped together. The man went down like a sack of flour and stayed there, moaning pitfully on the ground._ _

__Penn came back to himself, breathing hard. He stared down at the two men. After a minute, he felt a grin grin spread over his face._ _

__He could do this – he could still _do_ this!_ _

__He wasn't completely helpless. Even without the strength and speed his demon had given him, Penn realized that he still had the experience, the muscle memory, and the instincts of his centuries as a vampire. In the face of that confidence, his fear receeded slightly. It was still there, but he could work around it now. He began to walk on the streets again. He may no longer be a vampire – he may even fear vampires now, with a terror that nauseated him – but he could hold his own in the human world. What difficulties were banking machines and traffic laws, now that he knew he could defend himself in a fight?_ _

__Nothing._ _

__With this assurance, Penn began to keep tabs on L.A. It was difficult, but he did his best. He knew how to read between the lines of official news reports, especially when vampires were involved. He guessed when Wolfram & Hart had resurrected Darla by the silence of Angel Investigations. He didn't anticipate Dru coming back and turning her, but then he supposed he should have. She was the only one left of their bloodline, after all, the only one who could restore Darla to her former dark glory._ _

__Angel tried to stop them, of course. Penn took bets with himself on whether or not he would succeed. When he did, Penn didn't grieve. Darla still terrified him, for reasons he couldn’t bear to examine. He waited until things had settled down, until Angel Investigations was back in business, before he concentrated on losing his tail._ _

__It didn’t take long. Penn had survived for centuries, after all. He debated where to go for a long time. He could move from Paris to Italy – Rome had been a favourite of his ever since Angelus had forgotten him there, but Penn knew his preferences were on record. He needed to do something different, something Wolfram & Hart would never suspect. Now that Darla was dead, he was the only one resurrected by their dark magic. He didn't want to end up under the microscope again._ _

__It took a few weeks, but when he was clear of his tail, Penn decided to move back to L.A. It was the last place anyone would look for him._ _

__Once there, he rented a shitty apartment on the wrong side of town. The mundane human predators tried to intimidate him, but Penn faced them all with his new confidence. After several short fights, they were content to leave him alone. He took some time to explore his new city._ _

__L.A. was a marvel. It was vibrant and bright, it shone in a dangerous way. Once that might have scared him, but now it only made him feel alive. There was something about the city that had called to him during his final days as a vampire, and that same something whispered to him now. He took pains to avoid Wolfram & Hart and kept himself firmly on the opposite side of town from Angel Investigations. Still, there was much of the city to see. _ _

__It was strange to experience it as a human, but once he got used to breathing and the need for shelter, it wasn't really so bad. He hadn’t missed food while he was a vampire, but there was a lot more selection around now than there had been in his Puritan father’s house. Indian and Chinese, Italian and these little potato-pancake things the vendor outside his apartment sold. Penn liked them with mayonnaise._ _

__He was weak compared to a vampire, though. There were several hives in L.A., and Penn knew he had to be able to defend himself. He found a gym that offered exercise coaching and sparring matches. That was where he met Jim Street._ _

__Penn liked the kid from the start. He bumped into him in the change room one day and caught a of glimpse of Street’s scars._ _

__“You got some experience fighting, kid?” Penn asked him, nodding at the thin, well healed lines._ _

__“Some,” the kid said. Penn couldn’t tell if he was being honest or deflecting. He didn’t much care. He'd sparred with a few guys at the gym since he'd arrived, but no one had been a challenge._ _

__“Go a few rounds with me, then,” Penn offered. He grinned. “Unless you’ve already heard of my reputation and want to run scared.”_ _

__The kid raised an eyebrow. “I don’t run,” he said, and led the way to the practice ring. Penn followed._ _

__The first bout was over quickly. The kid had moves, but Penn had experience. It didn't take him long to put Street on the mat._ _

__Instead of getting upset and leaving, though, like most of the guys at the gym, the kid just laughed. “You’re awesome,” he said, climbing back to his feet. Penn grinned at the praise and bounced on his toes. “Where’d you learn that?”_ _

__Penn thought of Italy, of drunken bar fights and duels in the crisp air before dawn. “Oh, here and there.”_ _

__The kid raised an eyebrow. “Travelled a lot, have you?”_ _

__Penn flashed him a grin. “You have no idea.”_ _

__The kid laughed and stuck out a hand. “Jim Street,” he said, introducing himself._ _

__“Gamble,” Penn told him on the fly, taking his hand and shaking it. He figured that’s what this was. “The name’s Gamble.”_ _

__They became regular sparring partners after that, meeting at the gym on alternating afternoons. Penn showed Street a few moves and Street returned the favour, demonstrating some techniques Penn had never seen before. “Army,” Street explained when Penn asked him where he’d been trained. “I’m out now, thinking of joining the police. If I get in, I want to try out for S.W.A.T. They’re the best of the best. You should come with me. You’re better than Haddock, my old drill instructor. I bet they’d take you in a heartbeat.”_ _

__Penn grinned. He found the idea of himself as a police officer, paid to uphold the law, hilarious. He leaned down and helped Street off the mat, the way Street had shown him. “Maybe I will.”_ _

__He thought about it off and on for the next few days. It wasn’t about the money. Penn had accounts with every major bank in the world, prepared for eternity. He only had a couple of measley decades to look forward to now, but he needed something to do during the day._ _

__The problem was, the fear was still there. It wasn't as strong as it had been before, when he first appeared in Wolfram & Hart's basement, but it lived under his skin. Fighting seemed to settle it, but it couldn't make it completely go away. Penn didn't know where it came from or what caused it. He buried it with long runs at night and with sparring during the day. Drinking helped, too, but that reminded Penn too much of his father. _ _

__It was the same fear he had always lived with, the fear he had tried to banish first with the Church's teachings and then with his bow, which worked better. His demon had obliterated it. It was back now, though, an ever-present gnaw. He could describe it only as the feeling that something was coming for him._ _

__Shadows still terrified him. He slept with a light on at night._ _

__Penn figured that since the gym was good at keeping the feeling at bay, S.W.A.T. might be better. It was a job, at least, and would keep him occupied during the day._ _

__He went to see Benny a few days after talking with Street. Benny was a genius with paperwork and Penn’s main contact in the city, the one he didn’t want Wolfram & Hart to find. He liked the name he'd given Street – “Gamble”. That’s all this was, after all, a roll of the dice. If it didn’t work out, well – Rome was still nice this time of year._ _

__Gamble and Street did well in S.W.A.T. Penn wasn’t sure about the whole “white hat” thing, but it was okay. They got to shoot people, and Penn liked that part. He didn’t follow orders too well, and he was shit at working in a team, but Street liked him and they got the job done. The action kept him moving, kept the nightmares at bay. That was all that mattered._ _

__Until it didn’t._ _

__Fucking paper-pushing mother _fuckers_. Penn didn’t know what their problem was. He and Street had infiltrated the hostage situation, rescued the civilans, and gotten away clean. What the fuck was their problem? That he didn’t follow orders? They were fucking stupid orders!_ _

__Penn paced the chief's office. He didn't understand what he had done wrong. Penn still thought of most humans as less than nothing, as food. He had actually committed himself to protecting them, though, to doing his best to help them. Angel should have been proud._ _

__Not Angel – the _Chief_. Penn stilled. He stared at his boss, realizing only then that he had been interposing Angel when he looked at him since joining S.W.A.T. He felt his stomach drop into his boots. Was that what this had been about? Had he been trying to be more like his Sire? Had he joined S.W.A.T. because that’s what he thought Angel would have wanted him to do?_ _

__Fuck _that_. Fuck Angel. Fuck S.W.A.T. and fuck fucking Jim Street. _ _

__Penn quit._ _

__He left the station and went home. He was halfway through packing up his apartment when he stopped. What was he doing? Running away? Penn _liked_ L.A. He liked the mood in the city at night, liked the dive bar down by the water. He even liked his shitty apartment._ _

__Penn upended his half-packed bag. Fuck that. He wasn’t leaving. Angel didn’t own the whole city. Penn could live here if he motherfucking wanted to._ _

__So he did. He kept his apartment and stayed in the city. His dreams started up again, but he ignored them. He didn’t bother getting another job and let his membership at the gym lapse. He spent a lot of time drinking down by the docks. Alcohol had always worked on the fear, after all._ _

__What had been he doing, Penn asked his now-empty bottle, trying to be human? Humans were weak, were _nothing_. He should get himself vamped, he should say _fuck this shit_ and just do it. His demon would make everything easier. He wouldn't have this fear, gnawing always inside his chest. He wouldn't have this _ weakness_.

Instead of making the fear go away, though, the alcohol just made it worse. Penn got half-way to the nearest hive before he collapsed from terror. He curled into a ball and shivered along the side of the road. He crawled back to his apartment and passed out. Above all else, he came to hate his human need for sleep.

Every night his dreams tormented him. In them he went to Angel Investigations and begged his Sire for forgiveness. He went back to his childhood home and stood there while his father cursed him, hit him, called him a weakling and a disgrace. 

In his dreams, Penn bowed his head and knew the accusations were true.

By morning he'd be shaking, covered in sweat and smelling of booze. For weeks, Penn scrubbed himself as well as he could in the shower, then went back to the bar and repeated the cycle all over again. Slowly, though, he began to realize that he needed another job. His fears were growing worse. He needed something to do, something to focus on. Only he _knew_ he couldn't be a white hat anymore. He didn't want to try to be Angel, always struggling to make up for past wrongs. Penn didn't have the crushing guilt that Angel suffered, the weight of blood soaking through his soul. He hadn't cared about the human lives he took while he was a vampire, and he didn't care now. He cared only about his own selfish fear, as he always had.

At the bar, he started doing more than just drinking. He began to talk to people, network, look for something to keep him occupied during the day. There were plenty of jobs available by the docks, things that definitely weren't white hat stuff. Penn did a few thefts and several murders. He gained something of a crew, and learned the names of men who didn't give two shits about anyone but themselves. They started doing real jobs together – quick, dirty work. Penn felt the fear receed again. 

He could do this. He could handle this human thing without either turning into Angel or drowning in a bottle like his father. He could be his own man.

When he heard about the rich kid looking for a breakout, Penn knew every gangster in L.A. would take notice. He didn’t need the money, but he liked the idea of stealing this guy right out from under S.W.A.T.’s nose in Angel’s city. He was feeling confident again, strong. Penn learned that Street was back on the S.W.A.T. team, and that was just fucking _perfect_. Penn would show him. 

He’d show everyone.

Fuck if it didn’t work out quite like that. He'd never been smart. 

Fighting Street down by the railcars, after everything had gone to shit, Penn felt the fear he'd kept at bay for so long reach up and seize him. He stumbled, and Street gained the upper hand. Penn swallowed against the burn of terror in his chest.

Everything was pointless. Why the hell did he keep trying? He'd lived in terror since childhood. Nothing he did had ever worked out. He'd been a pointless human for twenty nine measley years, and then a forgettable vampire for another two hundred and fourteen. Wolfram and Hart had brought him back as an experiment, and even that had failed. Darla was dead. He lived on, but why? So he could muck around in dive bars, doing his best to ignore the fear the lived inside him, the crushing terror of a child who didn’t know where to go, what to do, or how to save himself from someone bigger and stronger than himself?

Street lunged at him. Penn shifted backwards, lifting an arm to ward off the blow. Why did he keep trying, Penn wondered? Wouldn’t it be easier to just let go?

When Street hit him again, Penn stumbled and fell back onto the rails. He felt his fear rise up and, for once, he embraced it. He lay still, the steel cold beneath his back, and felt the rumble of the approaching car. 

The pain, the fear – it would be over soon.

Penn didn’t see the train coming, but he felt the impact. Overwhelming pain for a split second before everything shut down. 

_I’m coming, Father,_ he thought. For one miraculous moment, the fear disappeared. 

He died.

A short while later, he came back.

Penn woke in a body bag. He gasped for air and tore at the cloth, fingers catching until he found the zipper and ripped it open. He sat up, shivering, and looked around.

He knew this place, he’d come down here a few times to identify bodies and play practical jokes on the new kids on the force. He was in the district city morgue.

The room was empty. Penn stared at the cold, tile walls and the concrete floor with the drain set in the middle of it. He put a hand on his chest and felt his heartbeat, the too-familiar _bitta-tata_ of his nightmares. 

No. _No_.

His terror was back and stronger than ever. Penn stumbled off the morgue table and onto the hard, cold floor. He felt the chill seep up through his bare feet. He breathed the still air. 

He was human again – _still_. He was alive. He was _not dead_.

Penn didn't know how he left the morgue. He came to himself several hours later, wandering the dark streets of L.A., wearing a stolen set of medical scrubs. He paused in front of a storefront and examined the dim reflection of his face for signs of trauma, of damage. There had been a train, Penn knew. He had _died_.

He was sure he had.

Only there was no damage to his face, to his skull. It was whole. Penn ran a shaking hand over his head, checking for injury. 

There was none.

He laughed – a broken, humourless sound. What had Wolfram & Hart done to him? What magic had they used to bring him back? Why wouldn't they _let him die_?

The fear rose up and engulfed him. Penn walked to the nearest bridge and jumped off.

There was no hesitation, no second thoughts. The reality of death, down by the rails, had finally banished his constant state of terror. Perhaps this would, too. 

Only reality lied. He could not die.

Penn woke up again in the morgue. It was a different morgue this time, one of the others scattered about the city. Penn climbed shakily from the body bag and stood naked in the deserted room. He stole another set of scrubs and tried again, this time by stepping in front of car speeding too fast down the streets of L.A. He saw the headlights and felt the impact, and knew the short, peaceful silence of death – the cold nothingness that was like infinity paused – until he blinked his way back to consciousness and took his first, shaking breath.

He was in the same morgue he had woken from the second time. This time the room wasn't empty, though. A short man stood nearby, staring in horror as Penn coughed air into his unused lungs.

"I knew it," the man whispered, almost to himself. He stared at Penn in horrified fascination. "They told me I was crazy, but I _knew_ you were the same man I had processed just yesterday, the one who'd jumped off a bridge. How did you do it? How did you come back?"

Penn stared at the man. He stumbled off the table but the man didn't move. "We need to get pictures," he was saying, "documentation. This is incredible. We need –"

He'd never need anything ever again. Penn reached forward and snapped his neck.

The man looked surprised as he died, as if he couldn't believe Penn would do such a thing. Penn felt nothing except the fear burning in his belly, now brighter than ever.

No one could know. No one could _ever_ know. If someone knew, then Wolfram  & Hart would find out and come for him. They would take him and dissect him, sacrifice him over and over again to their Senior Partners. Penn would live and die at their mercy, and no rescue would ever come.

And that, maybe, was the fear he had always lived with, the kernel of truth that he knew. It was that truth that kept him awake at night, that told him not to look into the shadows lest something he could not fight looked back. Penn knew in the depths of his hated soul that he was alone, that no one would ever help him, that no one would save him from his father’s fists. 

Penn mastered himself as best he could and stripped the body of the morgue attendent, transferring his toe tag and putting on the dead man's clothes. He left the morgue and caught the first bus out of the city, heading as far away from Wolfram & Hart as he could.

And then, when he was safely away, he tried to kill himself again.

This time it was by drowning. Blunt impact hadn't done it, not even twice. It would be stupid to try jumping off a bridge again. Drowning – yeah. Drowning must be harder to come back from.

Penn rented a hotel, filled the tub, and drank enough to put himself in a stupor. Then he laid face down and inhaled.

He woke up almost a day later, in a different, unfamiliar morgue, and coughed bathwater from his lungs.

There was no one around to murder this time. Penn escaped and made his way north. Over the next year he tried electrocution, exposure, strangulation, and exanguination. When he always came back, he gave up and tried blunt trauma again.

Eventually, he lost all track of time. He wandered from city to city, criss-crossing the US. He killed anyone who seemed to recognize him, who could have reported him to Wolfram & Hart. He lived in alleyways and shivered in the rain, he died of exposure and disease. He fought a man for a cardboard box and he was weak, so very weak. He got stabbed in the gut and died again. He stumbled into a gutter and drowned, then woke a day later to cough more water into his lungs and drown again. 

And he always – always – came back.

One day a woman found him. He was cold and shivering. He wasn't sure if he was going to die, had just died and come back, or had died multiple times. He had no idea where he was or what he was doing. He was finally numb. 

There was a woman staring down at him, though. Penn looked up at her. 

He should kill her. She might know. He tried to move his hands, but couldn't. He was too weak. 

"Come on," the woman said. "It's okay, come on."

Penn blinked and looked around. He was in a ditch, he realized. Rain was falling softly. The woman looked like an angel, like a messenger from the Powers.

"Let me die," Penn gasped. He felt tears leak from the corner of his eyes to join the rain falling gently down onto his face. "Please. Please just let me die."

"No," the woman said, still gentle. "I can't, you understand. I can't just let you die. Come on, get up. You can do it."

Penn swallowed. He stared at her and waited for the fear to consume him again. He felt only numbness, though, an exhaustion that smothered him down to his soul. 

"Come on," the woman coaxed again. "I have some hot soup at home. You can have some."

The thought of food jarred him. Against his will, Penn’s mouth began to water. His stomach rumbled. He wondered when he had last eaten, had a vague memory of a moldy sandwich stolen from the gutter. 

Was this what he had become? The great, feared vampire Penn?

He laughed then, a sad chuckle, and the woman took it as encouragement. She climbed down into the gutter and hauled him up. Penn didn't try to resist her. He even put his feet down and helped her lift him. She guided him to her truck, and that was when Penn realized he had been laying on the side of the highway. Where was he, he wondered? What year was it?

"It's 2005," the woman said, helping Penn into the truck. “We're just outside Waverly, Iowa."

Penn realized he must have asked the question outloud. He kept his mouth shut while the woman – Connie, she said her name was – drove them into town. She owned a small house near the town's only bar. Penn came to as the truck rumbled to a stop, and realized he had fallen asleep against the window.

"Into the house, now," Connie coaxed him. "There you go."

Penn stumbled after her. He sat in the woman's shower while she undressed him, and flinched when the hot water hit his skin. After a moment, he started shivering. 

"I'm cold," he murmured, feeling the ice settle in his chest where the fear should be. "So cold."

"It's okay," Connie said. She sat with him besided the shower. "It's going to be okay."

Penn didn’t say anything. She made him soup, and it was the best thing he had ever tasted. He spent the night on her sofa, clean for the first time in he didn't know how long. Connie's brother had died on the side of the road, he learned. No one had stopped to help him. "So I couldn't leave you," she said, apologetically. "Even if you wanted to die. I'm sorry, but I couldn't."

Penn nodded and didn't argue. The next day, Connie had to go back to work. She was a waitress at the only bar in town. "You're free to stay here if you like," Connie told him as she took the truck keys from the table. "It's no bother."

It was, Penn knew. It was a huge bother. He didn't argue with her, though. He felt warm for the first time in so long. 

"Thank you," he said instead. Connie just smiled at him, bright and happy, and left.

Penn dozed on the sofa. After a few hours got up and wandered around. Connie's house was nice, he decided. Old and lived in, probably inhereted from her parents. They were both dead. Their ashes were in urns on the living room table, a little plaque attached to each one. _Alice James_ , said one. _Ben James_ , said the other.

Connie had given him a set of clothes to change into. They were probably her father's. Penn touched the fabric and felt the weight of Connie's kindness. He didn't know what to do with that.

The next day, he left the house after Connie had gone to work and stood in the sunlight. He tried to remember if he had appreciated the sun during his time as Brian Gamble. He couldn't remember. It was a novelty, though. He hadn't missed it when he was a vampire, but he did now. His memory was still filled with the rain, the cold. The two years he had spent wandering blurred together in his mind. 

He stood in the sunlight, Connie's donated clothes on his back, and felt warm.

Later that day, Penn went to a bank in the first time in two years. He still had money – lots of money. He used one of his alias accounts and withdrew several hundred dollars. He put it into an envelope and left it for Connie on her table. Then he stood and looked at it until Connie came home.

She touched his shoulder, startling him. "Hey," she said.

"Here," Penn said, thrusting the envelope at her. He didn't know what else to do.

Connie lifted an eyebrow, but opened the envelope. Her mouth dropped open in surprise. "Did you – ?"

Penn shook his head. "It's mine. I'm not, I mean – I _was_ homeless, and... and lost. But I have money. I want you to have this."

Connie nodded and closed the envelope again. "Thank you," she said. She looked at him. "What will you do now?"

Penn turned away and brushed his hands through his hair. It was clean. "I don't know," he confessed.

"Do you want a job?" Connie asked.

Penn coughed out a laugh. "I don't need the money," he said.

"No," she agreed, still looking at him, "but I think you need a purpose."

There was nothing Penn could say to that. It was true, he knew that from him time at S.W.A.T. "Do you know of a job?"

She shrugged. "The bar could use someone for the early shift. We're always looking for a body, but Waverly is a small town. You could start tomorrow if you liked."

Penn licked his lips. A bartender. He had drank enough over the centuries to know the basics, but he’d never served in a bar before. Unexpectedly, he found himself thinking that it was something Angel had never done. Penn forced away the memory of his Sire. It gawned on the edges of his numbness. "Uh, sure. I could do that."

The smile Connie gave him made him blink, but slowly, stiffly, he smiled back.

He slept on the couch that night, and started work at the bar the next day. It was... different. The people of Waverly didn't care that he was a stranger, or lost. They only wanted their beer, or cheap whiskey on the rocks. This was a working town, Penn learned. The men who came here at the end of the day weren't the type to ask questions.

Still, everyone knew Connie. She was like a bright flower among grey rocks. When she laughed, every eye turned towards her. 

Life fell into a strange sort of pattern. Penn would sleep on Connie's couch. He'd get up, maybe do groceries, and the two of them would go into work together. Connie served drinks while Penn worked the bar. Ralph would arrive for the later shift, and then Penn would do whatever needed to be done, whether help at the bar or serve food from the small kitchen.

Slowly, so slowly, colour began to return to Penn's world. Connie helped with that. He felt warm again. He started to smile, to laugh. He didn't think so often about leaving, about trying to kill himself again. The numbness lifted.

When it did, the fear returned.

It was different, and muted, but still there. Working at the bar wasn't enough to suppress it. 

"I need to _do_ something," Penn told Connie one night, restless with the weight of his growing fear. "I need to, to _move_. This life you have here, it's not enough for me."

Connie cared about him, in some strange way. "I know," she told him, sniffling. "I've known since I pulled you from that ditch that you were different." She wiped the tears from her eyes. "What do you want to do?"

Penn thought about it. He'd been thinking about that question for a while now. He needed something active, something would take his full attention and leave him less time for thought. He needed something Angel had never done, even if he hated to admit it to himself. His mind skittered once to bow before veering away, again. 

Not that. It was too soon for that. But something, something...

"I think I'll join the army," Penn said. 

"The army?" Connie gasped, surprised. "Why?"

Penn thought of Street, of the way he used to talk. "I had a... a friend, once, who was in the army. He used to tell me stories about it. I think that's the kind of thing I need."

"You'll be careful, though?" Connie asked him, her bright eyes scanning his face. She was the one who had found him in that ditch, who remembered what he had asked her all those months ago. "You won't let yourself get hurt?"

Penn did her the curtesy of thinking about it. "I don't think so," he said, finally. "I feel better, but not better enough. I think the army will help."

Connie took a deep breath in, let it out. "If you’re sure.”

"I am." He hesitated. "I'll need a name, though. A new name. I was wondering... do you think it'd be okay... I mean, could I take the name Ben?"

Connie stared at him for a moment, then gave him a watery smile. "I don't think you're quite a Ben," she said. "How about a William?"

"William James," Penn tried.

Connie swallowed heavily. "William James," she repeated.

'William James' joined the army the next day. The recruiting officer helped him file the paperwork, after Penn got the appropriate documentation with his new name. The army flew him out to Oklahoma for boot camp and then, eventually, to Afghanistan for his first tour.

It was different than Street's stories. Boot camp was good – it kept him moving too fast to think. Penn put on muscle faster than he ever had before. He learned the new weapons this century had created, but had some difficulty transitioning his marksmanship skills to the now-traditional sniper rifle. He scored too low for special training, but did well in the other areas. He surprised himself by enjoying the comradery of bootcamp, and noticed that his sleep was less interrupted than it had been. Thinking back, he realized that his nightmares had quieted when Street was in his life. Connie had helped in many ways, but not in that. 

She wouldn't have been able to help him, Penn understood, if something had attacked him during the night. Street would have, and so would the recruits of his platoon. 

During his tour, though, things slowed down. There was more downtime between action, and Penn found that as much as he might enjoy the presence of his teammates, he was still shit at interacting with humans. He had learned a little in S.W.A.T. and more from Connie. He tried to find the right thing to say, but inevitably got it wrong. The problem was that he still didn't _care_ about most humans. He’d hang out with them, and he could freely admit that Jim Street had been different, that _Connie_ was different, but people – normal people – didn't matter to him.

He didn't care if they lived or died, and he couldn't fake it well enough for his squad. It created a distance between him and his teammates, and the nightmares returned.

Eventually his first tour ended and Penn returned to Waverly. Connie was waiting for him at the house. She smiled brightly to see him, and Penn found himself hugging her, pressing her warm body to his. It felt good to have somebody he could be close to again. Connie evidently agreed, because before he could appreciate what was happening, she kissed him.

Penn kissed her back.

It was like fire, like burning. Penn gathered her in his arms and pressed her close, raining kisses down over her skin. Connie shivered and groaned. Penn picked her up and carried her to bed, stripped her of her clothes and tasting every inch of her.

He'd been a virgin during his first life and used sex as a weapon during his second. Now, alive again, Penn discovered the joy of touching someone without the urge to hurt them, the pleasure of burying himself in Connie's scent. A wild desire rocked him. He drove into her, Connie's hands gripping at his shoulders, her shouts of encouragement in his ear.

He never thought to use a condom.

They had sex constantly during the first week of his leave. They hardly left bed except to eat, the house familiar and warm in a way Penn had never known. He demonstrated his new mediocre cooking skills, one of the many things the army had taught him, and Connie laughed as she ate what he had proudly put on her plate.

It was during the second week that the cracks began to show. They started to argue over little things like dinner plans and house work. Connie seemed surprised when Penn stood up to her. The difference, Penn realized, was that he was no longer the numb, broken man she had found on the side of the road. He was more than the near-silent creature who had served drinks in the bar, who’d followed her home at night like a lost puppy. He wasn't quite himself any more, either, he's wasn't entirely 'Penn'.

He was 'William', he realized. He had changed.

He had also, he discovered one evening, grown older.

Connie had been staring at him in bed, running her fingers over his face. "You have squint lines," she said with a laugh, pressing her fingers to the side of his face. "You'll be a wrinkled old man one day. I like it."

William frowned at her. "I don’t have wrinkles.”

"Yes, you do!" Connie traced the side of his face and smiled again. "You really do. Right here." 

That had to be wrong. He got up from bed and padded to the closet mirror. He looked closely at his face.

She was right, he realized, staring at himself. There were wrinkles at the sides of his eyes, faint but present.

Unexpectedly, he felt tears prickle at the corner of his eyes.

"Will?" Connie asked, concerned, coming near to him. "What is it?" She made a face. "You can't really be that vain, can you?"

William shook his head. He couldn't say anything. A surge of intense emotion gripped him.

He was older. He was _growing older_. 

Maybe that meant he could die.

The wave of hope swamped him. He clutched at the closet mirror and closed his eyes, feeling it seep into every pore. He could die, he could _die_. Thank the Powers, but he could die.

Not yet, maybe, and not soon. But eventually, in a few measley decades, he could die. 

Connie didn't understand. William couldn't explain it to her. Eventually, he came back to bed and sobbed into her pillow. Connie patted his hair and murmured confused reassurances into his back.

She retreated a little, after that. His breakdown must have been a reminder of how little she actually knew about him. William knew that he should remedy that. If he respected her, if he wanted her, he needed to tell her something of his life, even if it was a lie.

He couldn't bear to lie to her, though. Connie was the one person who had always been good to him, who had found him and washed him, let him sleep on her couch and gotten him a job. She had supported his decision to join the army, and had awoken him to the joys of his body when he returned home.

He wasn't sure if he loved her – he didn't know what love _was_ – but he couldn't lie to her.

Neither could he tell her the truth.

"What's your real name?" she asked him one day, before leaving for the bar. "Penn's a nickname, you said, and I know you chose 'William' for my father. What's your real name? What should I call you?"

"I'm William now," he told her.

"Yes, but when we're alone," Connie pressed. "When it's just us, what should I call you?"

" _William_ ," he repeated, more forcefully than he should.

Connie's face shut down. "Fine," she said. "I'll be back in a few hours, _William_." She slammed the door as she left.

He watched her go.

The cracks between them continued to lengthen and pull. "Tell me about the army," Connie asked him one night. "What was it like? Where did you go?"

"Afghanistan," William told her with a shrug. 

"Yes, but what was it like?" she pressed.

"It was hot," he said. "It was hot and the sand was bright."

He knew that she wanted more, but how could he explaine how much he had loved the desert sun as it shone relentlessly down? That he'd enjoyed standing outside his barracks and feeling that glorious heat soaking in through every pore? That he hadn't understood his squad-mates, that he hadn't cared when they lived or died, but that he didn't think he could survive without that brilliant sun?

The sun in Waverley was a quiet thing by comparison, weak and effortless. 

Connie seemed to understand that he was drawing away. Their sex became more infrequent, and she tried to talk to him less. By the time William gave in and signed up for a second tour, she didn't even bother to protest.

She had helped him so much, but he had never been hers. He knew this. He thought she might know it now, too.

His second tour went better than the first. Someone had spoken to his superior about his slightly reckless behaviour, and William found himself volunteered for the bomb squad. Instead of protesting, he agreed to the transfer and soon found himself enamoured. He loved being part of the bomb squad. The thrill of defusing a bomb was like a drug to him, as intoxicating as the Afghani sun. The desire to die stirred again in his chest, warmed by the sun and the deepening wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. 

If he _could_ die, he _would_. Eventually, the Powers would let him.

Maybe they'd let him sooner. He'd never survived a bomb blast, before. Maybe this would be the thing that finally killed him.

With the transfer, though, came a smaller squad. Will lost whatever subconscious protection a larger platoon had given him. The nightmares returned. He tossed and turned at night, seeking relief in the common room but not knowing how to bridge the divide between himself and the people in his squad. The problem was that he wanted them for his own selfish reasons and not because he cared about them or their lives. He had to get better at faking attention, at listening to stories about kids and pets without complaint.

He tried, but he couldn’t do it convincingly. He lived instead for the bombs, for the calls that came in the middle of the night. His second tour passed. 

When it was over, he returned again to Waverly. He knew before the plane set down that he'd be signing up again for a third tour. He'd never get over the high that disarming a bomb gave him and he already missed the desert sun. A few of the guys said their next tour would be in Iraq, and William was prefectly okay with that.

He still came back to Waverly, though. Even though he wasn't going to stay, he wanted to see Connie again. They'd spoken a few times during his second tour, but not often. Connie had been distracted, remote. William hadn't known or bothered to learn how to cross that divide.

Any half-formed plans he'd had on how to attempt to do that when he was home died when he saw Connie waiting for him at the Des Moines airport.

She wasn't alone. She was holding a baby in her arms. 

William freaked out. 

"It's yours!" Connie kept shouting, while William yelled at her. The whole airport stared at them, open-mouthed. Connie had tears running down her face. "Yours and mine!"

William shook his head. He shook it over and over and over again, as if he could shake everything out of it, as if he could make it not be true. He wasn't a _father_. He couldn't be a father!

The fear he had kept pressed down for so long rose up and choked him.

William turned around and ran. He ran away from the airport, away from Connie, away from the babe. He ran to the nearest bar and got himself falling-down drunk. He passed out in an alleyway, woke up, and started drinking again. He spent a week running. He stood along the side of the highway and debated trying to die.

Just once. Just one more time.

Eventually, he turned around and went back to Waverly.

Connie was waiting for him. She was red-faced and furious, but also vulnerable and hurt. "It's yours," she said again.

William stood in front of her, his hands open at his sides. He felt small, defeated. "I know," he said, "but I can't stay."

"You bastard," Connie hissed. Her hand raised as if she wanted to slap him, and William only folded in on himself and flinched. The blow never came. He looked up to see Connie lowering her arm, her face a mess of confusion, anger, and fear.

"You're going to marry me, though," she said, finally. "You're going to marry me and do your best to provide."

William stared at her as if from a long distance away. He nodded.

They were married in a small ceremony at the Mayor's office. William promptly gave her an entire account he had squirrled away at some point over the centuries. It was in a different name, but he changed it, giving her access and dividing a portion to be put into savings until the child came of age. "You'll be taken care of," he promised Connie. "I'll tell the Army we're married, and you'll get all my hazard pay. You'll be fine."

"We both will," she said, nodding to the infant.

William swallowed. "You both will," he echoed.

He left the next day.

His third tour was different than the rest. Iraq was different than Afghanistan, the sun and the heat just a shade off. He joined one squad for a couple of months, then was transferred to another. Sanborn and Elridge were alright. William tried to reach for a connection. He didn't know why he had been promoted, except that he was one of the best bomb disposal officers the army had.

Sanborn asked once if he had any family. William found himself telling him about Connie.

"Kids," he said, as if that explained everything, the fear and confusion.

Maybe it did.

The boy, Beckham, was a surprise. He was alive, William realized, alive in the way Connie was alive. He always had a smile on his face and he looked happy, so happy when he kicked that damn soccer ball. Finding him dead and cut open was harder on him than William would have thought. Finding his murderer became so important to him.

It ended poorly, of course. It always did when he got involved. As Penn, as Gamble, as a nameless homeless man, and now as William James – everything he did always ended in tears. 

The team broke up after everything. Eldrige got shipped back Stateside and Sanborn transferred out. William finished his tour and returned to Connie. She and the baby were waiting for him. William kissed her forehead and held his son.

He stared at him. He felt nothing but numbness and uncertainty, and lingering in his gut, ganwing on the edges, was the fear.

He stayed with them for a little while, but he knew it wasn't going to last. Buying food in the grocery store, holding his son – he couldn't do it, any of it. The fear grew and grew. He couldn't do this to a child, he couldn't infect him with his fear. 

William signed up for his fourth tour. He kissed Connie good-bye and made sure enough was put away to look after her and the baby. He flew back to Iraq. He knew that, no matter what, he wouldn't be coming home.

He wasn't sure what he would do if he survived this fourth and final tour. Maybe change his name and move to Europe. The nightmares were back and worse than ever. The army could no longer hold the fear at bay.

In the end, though, he didn't have to make that decision because finally, _finally_ , a bomb exploded. William had been disarming it on the outskirts of a city with a new team he hardly knew safely beyond the blast radius. He had been taking more chances this tour, pushing the boundries of what he could do. 

He thought he'd been disarming it safely, but something clicked with a finality William felt in his bones. He had a half-second to think before the bomb exploded. He felt only relief, and a wordless, desperate hope that he would not wake up again.

The pause was longer this time, like the universe was holding its breath, but eventually he came to coughing. There was dust in his lungs and in his eyes. William, Penn, whoever the hell he was now, blinked at the cooling Iraqi desert. He started to cry.

Again. The Power had denied him _again_.

Eventually he stumbled to his feet and looked around. The outskirts of the city was rubble, now. The sun was just going down in the west. He didn't know how long he had been gone for, but it must have been a few days at least. The army was gone. His body must have been blown apart, because his dog tags were missing, and the rest of his clothes were scattered around the site.

He was naked again, but unscarred. No sign of brusing or burns, no stiffness or achiness in his joints.

Alive.

Human.

Wearily, he hauled himself up from the rubble and scoured the deserted houses for some clothes. He found something that would fit him well enough and started making his way north out of the city. 

As he walked, he wondered what to do. He felt tired again, so tired. He couldn't go back to the army and didn't even want to try. Even if they could be persuaded that his death hadn't been a mistake, he no longer wanted that life. The thrill of bomb disarming had lost its power over the fear long ago. He didn't want to see Connie again. Better to leave William James in the rubble behind him. Better for the child that he should die.

He would have been a shit father, just like his own had been.

The decision settled something inside of him. He still needed something to _do_ , though. Connie had reminded him of that. He needed something to do or the fear would consume him.

For the first time in several years, he found himself thinking of the bow.

It had saved him once before, he remembered. Centuries ago, when he had been a boy terrorized by his father, the bow had settled him, calmed him. He had spent long hours practicing in the fields behind his father's house, shooting until his shoulders burned, until he could hit the worm’s hole of an apple from over a mile away. 

He had always possessed better vision than anyone he knew. Even as a vampire, Angelus had commended him. "Hawkeye" he'd called him, and Spike had laughed. Darla had smiled, and Dru had giggled, insane. "The Hawkeye'd one sees far, sees wide," she had said in her childish, singsong voice. "Come back, come back little bird, and fly away again."

Well he had certainly flown far, the man who had been Clinton Francis Pennington Barton thought to himself, standing in the relentless Iraqi heat. He had flown far and wide, farther than even Dru could have seen.

Maybe it was time to circle back again.

He hadn't been "Clint" for a long time now, not since Angelus had said he'd known a man named Clinton and Christened him "Penn" instead. Clint hadn't cared at the time – Clint Barton had been a man who lived in fear and weakness. Penn had been different, had been strong.

He wasn't strong any more. He had lived and died, again and again, always with the same familiar fear. Maybe it was time to be "Clint" again.

Clint made his way north to the next city, and from there to Europe. He accessed one of his old accounts and visited several custom bow-shops around the Continent. He spent some time relearning the feel of his old weapon, the way the wood bent and curved in his hands. There were new bows now, compound things that were easier to draw and sight, but Clint hated them. He had learned the recurve from a gypsy passing through town and it had always been the challenge he craved, the effort involved in the weapon proving the balm to his fear.

It took time, so much time. Clint paid for hours at a range and shot until his hands bled, then bought a bracer and shot some more. When the range kicked him out with muttered threats about the bloodstains on the floor, Clint retreated to the woods and continued to shoot. It took weeks, and then months, but finally his arms and shoulders relearned what they had to do. His gained calluses on his fingers and strength in his arms. The fear in his belly quieted as best it could.

Finally, though, the challenge of shooting at still targets waned. The fear began to bubble up again. Clint joined a local hunting federation and started shooting small game. The European forests still held rabbits and some deer. Germany forbade bowhunting, but Finland encouraged it. Clint had learned many languages during his tenture with Angel. He moved north.

It wasn't enough. There was no challenge to it, not really. Rabbits were dumb animals, and deer even dumber. Clint missed the excitement of S.W.A.T., the focus of the Army. He began to itch again with the need to _move_. The fear, which used to settle when his hand was on the riser, began to grow.

One day, a man came to him. He was a member of the local mafia. "There is a person," he told Clint, "that I wish dead. I want a silent, clean kill. I do not want a gun. Can you do this?"

Clint considered the question. He thought about how he felt at the prospect of killing again. It didn't bother him. It never had. 

"I can," he answered.

It was only after he took the contract that he realized he’d forgotten to ask how much the man would pay.

He didn't make that mistake the second time. A mercenary had to be paid, Clint remembered. He couldn't simply say he enjoyed the kill, the chase, even though he did. It was exhilarating. The man the mafia lord wanted killed wasn't much of a challenge, but his next contract was. Clint chased the mark all over Helsinki, following him via rooftop from one house to the next. When he finally lined up his shot, he felt a pride he had not experienced in years.

Over two hundred and fourteen, to be exact.

After that, Clint began to make a name for himself. He debated, for a long time, what handle to use, but finally settled on "Hawkeye". Angelus had been right, he consoled himself, he did see farther than him or anyone else. It was an apt name. 

The fear, for the most part, settled. Clint took contracts all over Europe, and then in Asia and the Middle East. Eventually, he even returned to the America's. He avoided L.A. and tried to stay off the official radar. He didn't want Angel or Wolfram & Hart poking around. 

He loved what he did, though. For the first time since that second tour, since Afghanistan, he could say that he loved the life he chose.

But it was lonely. The action kept the fear at bay, the activity kept him strong, but the nightmares still returned. He started sneaking into a travelling circus, letting the half-remember sights and sounds calm him. The gypsy who had taught him the bow had been from a circus. Clint had travelled with them for a time, until his father hauled him home.

The company helped keep the nightmares at bay, but Clint never stayed for long. Inevitably, he said the wrong thing to the wrong person and had to leave. He never knew where he would go and continued to take jobs all over the world. There was a market for a man with magnificent aim and the ability to make a silent kill. 

He died a few times while on the job. It was strange after avoiding death for so long as William James. Once he rolled off a roof and landed wrong, snapping his neck, and another time he was shot before eliminating his contract and bled out in an alleyway. It was okay, though, because no one else knew. Every time Clint awoke in a body bag and escaped the local morgue. He carried no I.D., so there was no reason to change him name. He took contracts annonmyously and used only his call sign when on a job. There was no one who knew Clint Barton was the assassin called Hawkeye. 

That changed when he met Natasha.

The first time he saw her, he thought she was a Slayer. She had the same deadly grace, the same effortless control. He was marking a contract at a party, and he followed her when she distracted the three guards outside. 

She was beauty in motion, but her hits, when they came, lacked the supernatural power of a Slayer. She was human, after all, but exceptionally skilled. 

“If you are going to kill me, than kill me,” she said to the empty air, when her opponents were on the ground. “Make your decision, because I have a job to do.”

“Just admiring your work,” Clint said, stepping into the light. She shouldn’t have been able to see him – he was good, but she was obviously better. 

She quirked one eyebrow at him, her red hair the colour of dry blood in the dim light. “Professional appreciation?”

Clint smiled. “If our contracts overlap, you are more than welcome to take the hit. I was only here for the cheese.”

She smiled. “The refreshments are not that good, but the drinks are passable, I suppose.”

“Best vodka I’ve had since Stalingrad.”

“Meet me here in fifteen minutes, and I’ll pour you some better.”

Clint waited for her. He wasn’t surprised when he felt the knife at his back, ten minutes after she left him to infiltrate the party.

“Tell me your name and who you work for. You have ten seconds.”

Clint grinned. “Hawkeye. Myself. Why only ten seconds?”

She opened her mouth to reply, but he moved. He might be human, but he still had a few tricks up his sleeve. Angelus had always been too fond of knives.

A moment later their positions were reversed. Clint grinned into her hair and pressed the knife closer to her skin.

“Care to return the favour?”

“No,” she replied, and moved. 

It turned out, she knew a few tricks, too.

They danced for a several minutes, Clint turning and thrusting, needing every second, every ounce of experience he’d gained over the centuries, to avoid her blows. He laughed out loud, whooping when he connected. By the Powers, she was good! 

Finally, they drew too much attention. By mutual accord they stopped. Clint gestured to the night, and the woman rolled her eyes. She took the lead, and together they sped away from the scene of her crime.

They spent the night together. Clint’d had sex with several women since Connie, but the experience always left him feeling unsettled. Arousal always momentarily pushed back the fear, but Clint inevitably woke in a cold sweat, the nightmares echoing worse than ever.

With Natasha, it was different. She was so _alive_ – alive in the way in the way that Connie and Beckham had been alive – but she was combat ready as well. It made her lithe and competent, and they danced together between the sheets with as much grace as they had in the street. Clint moved with her and felt himself grinning just from the sheer joy of it. Unexpectedly, she grinned back.

He woke in the morning from a deep, sound sleep, with no cooling sweat on his skin. He lay in bed and savoured the feeling. When he finally did turn and rise, he was unsurprised to see that Natasha had gone. He was more than a little shocked to realize that no unexpected time had passed – he had half expected the Black Widow to stab him in his sleep and confirm the rumours of her kills. 

Clint carried the memory of that meeting with him like a talisman. Natasha was like a flame, a bonfire that warmed everything around her. He kept the memory close, and used it as a shield against the nightmares.

The problem with looking into a fire was that when you stepped away, the darkness seemed all the more absolute. After Natasha had gone, Clint felt the loneliness of his situation more acutely than he ever had before. He began to take more risks, to push himself to his limits. He died several more times while on the job, and twice off of it.

That was when S.H.I.E.L.D. approached him. A large black man with an eyepatch tracked him down and offered him a position. It was an interesting offer – S.H.I.E.L.D. sounded like a pseudo-military organization with an off-beat mandate – but Nick Fury frightened him. 

Clint didn't know why. The Director looked nothing like Angel, nothing like his father. There was something paternal in his expression, though, something that asked Clint to come home. Where other lost mercenaries might have felt comforted, Clint only felt afraid. 

“Why are you interested in me?” Clint asked, doing his best to hide his fear and discover how much S.H.I.E.L.D. knew about him.

“You have a very interesting profile,” Fury told him candidly. He took a sip of his lukewarm beer. Fury had tracked him to a run-down bar on the eastern edge of Berlin. “A bow and arrow isn’t a technique we see of lot of nowadays, but it obviously works for you. What I find more intriguing, personally, is the fact that no one can seem to find out anything about you. It would seem that ‘Clint Barton’ is a particularly well-devised alias, and anyone with the skills to manufactor that level of security is of interest to S.H.I.E.L.D.”

Clint kept his hands under the table to hide their shaking. He plastered a grin on his face. “It’s nice to know that I’m wanted.”

Fury smiled in that paternal and terrifying way. “No it isn’t. You’ve done your best to fly under the radar, Mr. Barton. I hope that fact that we’ve found you regardless has piqued your interest.”

“Oh, I’m piqued,” Clint murmured. 

He fled the meeting as soon as was possible, and did nothing but run for the next few weeks after that. He put away his bow for the next several contracts he took, and changed his contact information online. S.H.I.E.L.D. still found him again. This time they sent a medium height, medium weight balding white guy who couldn’t be more Fury’s polar opposite if he tried.

Nothing about this man seemed paternal. He looked instead like a middling competent accountant. Clint walked into a new coffee shop in San Fransico to find his usual drink order already bought and paid for by “the man by the window”.

The barista obviously thought they were there on a date. She winked at him as she handed over his coffee.

Clint debated turning around and walking out, but if S.H.I.E.LD. had tracked him this far, he was in serious trouble. Cold sweat prickled along his neck but Clint did his best to keep it from his face. How much more had they learned about him? How much more could they learn? How long until they turned him over to Wolfram & Hart?

“Mr. Barton,” the man said, looking up from his phone the moment Clint sat down. “My name is Agent Coulson. I am very pleased to meet you.”

“Right,” Clint said, too nervous to spar. “What do you want? I already told you people no.”

Coulson looked at him. His gaze was sharp, but not heavy. He blinked once, obviously coming to some kind of decision. “I just wanted to let you know, Mr. Barton, that S.H.I.E.L.D will not be pursuing you any longer. I will leave you my card, and you are more than welcome to contact us at any time if you wish to reconsider our offer.”

Clint stared at him. “There is no way you walked into his coffee shop thinking that.”

“No,” Coulson agreed., "but it is obvious that pushing you farther would only antagonise you. That is not our intention.” He slide a card from his wallet and pushed it across the table, then stood, taking his coffee with him. “Good day, Mr. Barton.”

And then he left.

Clint watched him go.

He stayed in the coffee shop for a long time after, watching the door, the windows, the back entrances and exits. There was no sign of surveillence. The only one staring at him was the barista, who obviously figured Clint’s date had taken one look at him and decided he wasn't worth his time, and was considering leaving him her number instead. Clint left before she could work up the courage.

He kept a low profile for the next couple of weeks, taking only a few jobs when they came, but there were no further overtures by S.H.I.E.L.D. Eventually, when the nightmares became too frequent, he went back to using his bow. There was still nothing from S.H.I.E.L.D. Clint wondered if that meant they were keeping their word.

His life began to descend again. He realized that running from S.H.I.E.L.D. had at least kept him occupied. Now that he was alone again, the fear and the nightmares returned. He felt lonely, which was ridiculous, because he had said no to S.H.I.E.L.D. for very good reasons. No organization could be that competent and not have supernatural connections. They had to at least know of Wolfram & Hart.

Still, Clint wondered more often than he should if he had made the right decision turning them down. Despite what he told himself, he never threw Coulson’s card away.

The Powers only knew what would have happened next, had Natasha not been captured. Clint felt himself falling further and further into despair. He began to drink, again, even though he knew it would not help him. He began to eye tall buildings, wondering what it would feel like to fall off. It had been several months since he’d last died – perhaps things had changed.

His contact in Russia altered those half-considered plans. Clint had kept tabs on Natasha in a very peripheral way. He didn’t want to stalk her, preferring to keep their night together as a flame in his mind, though admittedly one that had lost a great deal of its power. He did keep track of what jobs she took, though, and occasionally refused work if she had expressed prior interest. He thought she might have been doing the same.

Word travelled swiftly on the internet. Clint’s contact informed him that Natasha had disappeared. The Red Room had turned on her, or maybe she had turned on them – either way they had captured her, and they weren’t about to let her go.

Clint held the memory of her in his mind, her bright, fierce smile, and the way she had seemed so very _alive_ , and knew he could not accept that. 

He tracked her to a fortified compound in Siberia. He brought what equipment he thought might be necessary, but a day of surveillence proved that the facility was too highly guarded. He didn’t dare die in the attempt, because the time it would take him to come back was more than Natasha could afford.

In the end, he had no choice, not if he wanted to save Natasha’s life. He took the card from his pocket, the one Coulson had given him, and dialed the number he told himself he would never use.

The phone picked up on the second ring. “Coulson.”

“I need five men and two days, and I can bring both Hawkeye and the Black Widow in to S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“You can have three men and one day, Hawkeye. Where are you?”

Clint clenched his teeth but gave his location. He didn’t even bother hanging up the pay phone, just waited for the S.H.I.E.L.D. rep to appear. 

Within ten minutes, Coulson himself showed up.

“I was in the area,” he explained as he walked around the corner. He still looked like a middling competent accoutant. “You are not the only one interested in saving Natasha Romanov.”

“If you already have a mission, why do you need me?” 

Coulson gave him an unimpressed look. “Because we want both of you, obviously. And the mission will go a lot smoother with you on board.”

Clint followed him back to the S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouse, located not far from where Natasha was being held. Together they went over Clint’s plan. Coulson pointed out a few salient facts, and Clint had to grudgingly admit the man was good. There were two other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents present under Couslon’s command, and together they went in six hours after Coulson had picked him up.

It wasn’t easy, but it would have been impossible for Clint to proceed on his own. Coulson might look like an accountant, but he moved like a Ranger. Clint found himself staring at him more than once while they infiltrated the facility, caught by the contradiction. 

Natasha wasn't expecting them. Clint flashed her a grin as they undid her restraints. “You didn’t think you could get rid of me that easily, did you?”

“It was one night eight months ago,” Natasha said, blood tacky on her lips. “And despite what you might think, it will never happen again.”

“Ah, you’re prettier with your clothes on, anyway,” he lied.

Natasha gave him an eyebrow that declared how much she knew that was not true. Coulson reloaded his weapon.

“Exits?” he asked. His face was perfectly composed, but there was a light in his eyes.

Clint gave in and decided that he liked him.

Natasha inclined her head southeast. “Guards, retinal scan, and booby-traps,” she said. She paused a beat. “Coulson. Another face I didn’t expect to see.”

Coulson gave her a bland smile. “S.H.I.E.L.D was serious about its offer, Ms. Romanov.”

Natasha stared at him. “We’ll talk,” she said finally. Coulson nodded.

Clint took point and Coulson brought up the rear. Agent Mattheson took some fire, and Clint rolled his eyes but hauled him out of the facility. It was practically second nature after his stint in the Army, and besides, this was a crappy place to die. Agent Lee was waiting for them by the exit point, and the five of them escaped before the facility blew.

“So, S.H.I.E.L.D.?” Natasha asked, when the night air stilled.

“Let’s get back to the safe house,” Coulson said, “and I can give you the sell.”

“I think you’ve already done that,” Clint said, guesturing around them.

Coulson pursed his lips. “I like to be thorough.”

He did, indeed, give them the full details, going through the entire contract, highlighting any areas of interest, and helping Clint through the legalese. He did that as if it were his day job, as if he didn’t still have blood splatter on his temple or soot on his clothes. He wouldn’t let them sign until they understood every particular, and had gone over the entire form on their own.

Clint decided he _really_ liked him.

He signed his name Clint Hawkeye Barton, making no mention of Penn. Natasha asked them to call her Romanoff in public, and calmly declared that she would disembowel them if they ever called her Nat. Clint grinned and resolved to call her that at the first available opportunity.

Surprisingly, that night he slept well. He crashed on the couch in the safehouse, and told himself he’d only close his eyes until the first of the nightmares hit. They were coming every couple of hours by that point. When he awoke, he’d take a long shower and plan how much he’d have to reveal to S.H.I.E.L.D.

He slept for eight hours. When he awoke, it was with the same lazy comfort as the morning after his night with Natasha. Clint kept his eyes closed and breathed deep, savouring the feeling of peace, the sensation of air cool on his skin without the clamminess of sweat.

It had to be a fluke. The action from the day before, the daring rescue, it must have calmed him enough to push the fears away. It would not happen again. Clint helped the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents pack up the safehouse and wipe down their prints, and then followed Coulson to the van. He drove them to the nearest hidden airport facility and flew them to Europe, and from there to New York. Clint kept his eyes open for the Red Room’s spies and Natasha did the same. 

Clint slept again on the plane, something he had never managed before, and once more at S.H.I.E.L.D. He didn’t want to leap to conclusions, but it became pretty obvious what the underlying cause was once S.H.I.E.L.D. completed his paperwork and Clint was assigned an off-site apartment of his own.

He took one step into the bare, white-washed unit and felt terror flood him. It was like an avalanche, dragging him under. Clint turned around immediately and left, returning to S.H.I.E.L.D. with his heart pounding. He searched the building until he found Natasha stretching in the gym.

“Spar with me?” he asked, knowing his breath was coming far too fast.

Natasha speared him with a look, but stood up without a word. They moved to the mats and without warning, she sprung at him. Clint sighed with relief and intercepted her hit, blocking the strike and then ducking under the elbow that followed, snapping his leg out to take her down from behind her knees. She rolled over him and leapt, lightening fast, and kicked him in the small of his back. Clint tumbled forward, his breathing regular once more.

Afterwards, when they were both sweating and panting, they talked. Natasha sat next to him on the mats. Clint twisted his fingers together between his knees, and stared at his water bottle. “I don’t... I’m not good at being alone. I thought I was doing okay, for a long time, but...” He shook his head.

“Nightmares?” Natasha asked, no judgement in her voice.

Clint nodded, his throat tight. “Nightmares.”

“Past kills?”

He shook his head. “Father.”

“Ahh.” Natasha looked intriguied. “I’ve never had one of those.”

“A father?”

She nodded. “The Red Room is all I remember. I think they took me from my family.”

Clint stared at her. “Does that bother you?”

She seemed to think about it. “Yes, and no. I miss what I never had, but then again – I do not suffer as you do.”

Clint stared at his fingers again. “True.”

She cocked her head. “S.H.I.E.L.D. has given me an apartment. It is too large for me alone.”

Clint couldn’t help but smile. “Are you asking me to move in with you?”

She gave him an unimpressed look. “I do not sleep well, either. Perhaps we can help each other.”

“Perhaps we can.”

“I will not sleep with you again,” Natasha warned him. “I never sleep with the same man twice.”

“I’m probably going to call you ‘Nat’ until you really do gut me,” he warned her back.

Natasha grinned. “We have a deal.”

Clint moved in with her that afternoon. It didn’t take long, it wasn’t as if he had a lot of stuff. His bows and arrows went in the corner, and his few sets of clothes in a single drawer. There was only one bed in the apartment, but they shared. Natasha was true to her word – there was nothing sexual between them. The first time they got into bed he shifted uncomfortably, but Natasha only turned over and closed her eyes.

Clint stared at her and realized she really did just want to sleept together for comfort. It was bizarre.

It was the best thing he had ever done.

For the first time in his life, he felt _safe_. Natasha was fierce, alive, and capable. She was better than him, faster. If anyone attacked, she would buy him enough time to wake and defend himself.

He could sleep – really _sleep_ – and nothing would get to him. The hazy fear he had carried from childhood, that nighttime was when his father would come for him, would beat him, slowly eroded away.

It was glorious. 

He didn’t know how to ask about Natasha’s past, mostly because he wasn’t sure how much of his own he wanted to reveal, but he thought his presence must do something similar for her. Together they slept, woke in the morning refreshed, and left for work at S.H.I.E.L.D.

S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn’t as easy to fit in his life as Natasha. She was like a puzzle piece clicking into place, the sister he never had and had never understood he needed. With S.H.I.E.L.D., Clint felt like _he_ was the puzzle peice the organization kept trying to cut to fit – like they had a list of his skills on a piece of paper, and figured he would snap into place like a lost sheep come home.

It didn’t work out like that.

Clint was not only Clint Barton – he was Clinton Francis _Pennington_ Barton. The problems that had haunted him since waking in Wolfram  & Hart’s basement were only exacerbated in S.H.I.E.L.D. In S.W.A.T., Gamble had been able to turn a blind eye to the rules because he got results, in the Army, William had refuted regulations because he was the best bomb disposal officers in the corp, as a mercenary, Clint had been able to say _fuck the rules_ and do whatever the hell he wanted to get the job done.

But S.H.I.E.L.D. cared about procedure and more than that, they seemed to care about _him_. The first time Clint risked his neck on an op, Nick Fury showed up while he was getting cleaned up in the medbay. 

“I have big plans for you, Barton,” he said, looking even more intimidating than he had last time Clint they had talked, “and they don’t include you getting splattered all over the sidewalk. Learn how to fire a grappling hook from that weapon of yours and don’t take this kind of stupid risk again.”

Clint couldn't tell Fury that he had never been in danger, that he would have woken a day later in the morgue none the worse for wear, so he said, “Yes, sir,” and held Fury’s eye until the Director nodded at him and left.

His handler was waiting for him outside of the medbay, a senior agent by the name of Hill, righteous anger radiating off her in waves. “This is why we have procedure, Barton,” she hissed after stringing together a long line of curses that insulted Clint’s parents, their parents, and several relations twice-removed, “so you don’t end up in medical after every op and have _Director Fury_ come down here to give you shit personally.”

It seemed Natasha was having similar problems. “Two junior agents were almost killed today when I stepped out of cover to approach a mark,” she told him that evening at their apartment. “My handler was not pleased.”

“If they’re that stupid, why are they allowed out on ops with you?” Clint wondered while he fixed dinner.

“My point exactly. Agent Sitwell said I was ‘incredibly skilled, but reckless’.”

Clint grinned at her. “Funny, Agent Hill seems to think the same about me. When do you think they’ll wise up and put us on an op together?”

Natasha made a pleased hum as she bit into her lasagna. “I do not know, but I hope it will be soon. If a junior agent actually dies of the their incompetence, I think S.H.I.E.L.D. will not look too favourably on me.”

It took another month of halfway successful ops – always completed on Clint’s end of things, but occaisonally lacking in the ‘full execution of common sense’ to paraphrase Senior Agent Stackhouse – but eventually Fury called both Clint and Natasha into his office and glared at them.

“Since you are both incapable of following procedure, we have a decision to make. Either I decide that procedure is right and you are wrong and have you both thrown out on your ass, which, I might say, is what half of my organization is calling for right now, or I decide that the two of you are just too fucked up to follow the rules of normal people, and I promote you both.”

“Is that what the other half of the organization is calling for, boss?”

“Cut your sass, Barton, and no – the other half of my organization thinks you're HYDRA operatives sent to sow dissent in the ranks. There is a small minority among S.H.I.E.L.D., mainly composed of those who have seen you in action, who feel that letting you go would be a criminal waste of talent. Fortunately for you, I agree with them. As of this moment, you are both promoted above the grade to Level Five. I am assigning you on a permenant basis to Senior Agent Coulson.”

Clint grinned. Natasha merely raised an eyebrow. “Excellent. When do we begin?”

“Right now,” said a familiar voice from the doorway. Clint turned to see the still-accountant-like Agent Coulson stride into the office. “We have a situation in Jakarta that requires resolution. If you’ll both follow me?”

The ‘situation in Jakarta’ ended up being a HYDRA take-over of an Indonesian mineral fuel warehouse. Clint, Natasha, and Coulson surveyed the situation, plotted an op, and went in a few hours later. 

Just like when they broke Natasha out of the Red Room, the three of them worked well together. Coulson was cool, calm, and competent, while Natasha was her usual graceful, efficient self. Clint was able to mix both long-distance and close-range shots, and deal with any HYDRA operatives who got too close.

It was a heady experience. And two weeks later they did it all over again.

Over time, they refined their technique. Coulson was definitely the strategist, but he didn’t mind getting his hands dirty. Natasha was an expert at infiltration. Clint had the experience to do a little of everything well, but his aim was unparalleled. Together, the three of them quickly became S.H.I.E.L.D.’s most successful team, earning the handle ‘Strike Team Delta”. 

And for the first time in years, Clint felt the fear go away. It settled – at first just under his skin, then receeding into the shadows, and finally disappearing all together. It was because he felt safe, Clint knew, because he had Natasha and Coulson on his side, because with the two of them at his back he could face anything.

He was no longer alone.

There were drawbacks, though. The first time he got seriously injured on an op, both Coulson and Natasha freaked out. They were professionals, of course, so they freaked out by going cold and cutting a swath through enemy agents. Clint could admire their aim while bleeding out on the floor.

He’d never learned more than the basic first aid the army taught him, and he’d died from a gut wound before. He knew how painful it could be, but he always woke up again afterwards. This wasn’t new territory – this wasn’t something that could kill him. But Natasha and Coulson didn’t know that, and their faces were tight with worry until medical support arrived.

Looking at them, Clint began to worry, too. Not that he wouldn’t come back, but that he _would_. What would S.H.I.E.L.D. do if they discovered his secret? Would they dissect him? Would they turn him over to Wolfram  & Hart?

He didn’t heal any different than a normal human – Clint had been around doctors enough in the army to know that. Once medical stabilized him he had an agonizingly long recovery time in which to ponder his fate. It was during that stay in medical that he first heard about mutants, though. 

He hadn’t really believed in them before, which was bizarre considering the kinds of things he _did_ believe in. The doctors at S.H.I.E.L.D. had clearly dealt with them, though. They even joked with Clint about how they bet he wished he was a mutant now, when he was on crutches for two weeks while his abdominal muscles healed. 

As soon as he could, Clint looked into S.H.I.E.L.D. policy regarding unnatural abilities – he supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised to find it so detailed, but he was. S.H.I.E.L.D. regulations had obviously changed a little since Coulson had first read him and Natasha the legalise – next to ‘preferred gender’ and ‘preferred sexual partner, if any’ was now a section for ‘disclosure of mutant-like abilities – if needed, please attatch subsection C’.

Clint stared at the document for a while trying to decide what to do. He could blame his ability to come back from the dead on being a mutant, maybe, only standard bloodwork at S.H.I.E.L.D. included looking for the mutant gene and Clint’s test had come back negative. He couldn’t very well put ‘functional immortality due to magic’ on his paperwork, because as much as S.H.I.E.L.D seemed interested in evil scientists, ancient organizations, and crazy powerful mutants, he was beginning to realize that they didn't seem to understand there was another supernatural world outside. They never talked about demons, or vampires, and no one trained on wooden weapons in the gym. More than one junior agent had laughed at his bow, and even Coulson had looked confused when Clint packed his wooden knife on missions, explaining that there were some things you just couldn’t kill with steel. 

If he declared his ability now, it might save him trouble later on if – when – he finally did die on the job. At the same time, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Wolfram & Hart was at least peripherally involved at S.H.I.E.L.D. Someone had to be keeping S.H.I.E.L.D. deliberately in the dark. Clint knew several clients at Wolfram & Hart who would pay dearly to keep an organization like this from knowing about their supernatural crimes.

If that was true, filling out the paperwork might bring the wrath of Wolfram & Hart down on him and, through him, onto S.H.I.E.L.D.

Clint surprised himself by worrying what would happen to the organization if that occurred. If he kept quiet, at least he’d be the only one at risk. As bad as he was at caring about other people, he felt faintly nauseous at the idea of anything happening to Coulson or Natasha. If he died on the job, it was only his life that would be destroyed, not theirs.

Best to say nothing, then. It wasn’t as if S.H.I.E.L.D. were actually fighting demons, after all. As weird as the creatures were that they fought, they weren’t actually vampires. 

All of that changed in Budapest. Clint and Natasha were sent to retreive a file from a man thought to have links to HYDRA. The target was a known businessman named Andras Boda who was believed to have hidden the file in his personal safe at home. He was hosting a luncheon at his residence and Coulson had secured them entry. Clint and Natasha arrived as invited guests, and made small talk for almost two hours before managing to sneak off and search the study. 

Clint knew something was wrong the moment he saw the heavy curtains and small windows. Still, it had been so long since he had fought vampires that he hesitated. Before he could decide what, if anything, to tell Natasha, the vampires attacked. 

They were dressed as security guards. Coulson had likely had eyes on them the entire time, but hadn’t realized how fast they could move. Clint pulled his wooden knife from where he always stashed it in his ankle holster and lunged before the first vampire could get a bead on Natasha. He plunged the wooden knife into the vampire’s heart and automatically held his breath as it burst into ash.

Natasha stared at him, shocked, but Clint didn’t have time to say anything before the next vampire attacked. This one came in low, moving slower, judging him as someone who knew how to fight. Clint rushed it, snapping his empty hand forward towards it's teeth where a punch would do the most damage. When the vampire dodged, Clint was ready with the wooden knife. He stabbed it through the heart and it went down, exploding before it hit the ground.

Clint turned to Natasha. Her expression was blank but her eyes were wide. Clint passed her the wooden knife and unpacked his bow. S.H.I.E.L.D. had designed him a collapsible recurve that could be hidden under his clothes. He quickly changed out the steel arrowheads for the wooden ones he kept at the base of his ankle holster. 

“Vampires,” he told Natasha as he switched the heads. “Wood to the heart and beheading are best, crosses and others expressions of faith work, but you need to really believe in them to do anything. They are faster and stronger than a normal human, but have much the same range. Treat them as a particularly deadly kind of mutant and you’ll be okay.”

There wasn’t time for more. Andras Boda employed a full-time security force of ten officers, and they had to assume the entire lot were vampires. That meant eight left, and Clint could hear them coming from the other side of the house.

To Natasha’s credit, she held his eyes for only a split second too long before nodding. She settled into a fighting stance at his side, knife ready, and didn’t hestitate when the horde attacked.

Clint screwed the last arrowhead in place as the first vampire burst into the study. He shot as fast as he could, but he was only human now, and they weren’t. When they got too close he threw down the bow but kept his arrows, wielding the arrowhead as he would a tiny knife. Clint dodged, spun, stabbed, and jumped. Beside him, Natasha did the same. They fought for their lives in the cramped nook of the study, intent only on surviving the attack. 

Surprisingly, they did. Clint panted and looked around – the vampires were ash, sprinkled around the room, and Natasha was whole beside him. Quickly, they checked each other for injury. A few slashes and scratches, but nothing that wouldn’t heal.

Natasha looked at him. Clint held her gaze.

“After the mission,” she finally said. “We are going to talk.”

Clint nodded. He tapped his ear comm. “Couslon?” He must have heard the commotion.

There was no answer over the comm. Natasha's mouth went thin. Together they went to the hidden safe and checked it using the combination S.H.I.E.L.D. had secured for them. They took the file and wasted precious seconds confirming it's identity – it's what Coulson would have wanted them to do – and then escaped by freeclimbing down the side of the house.

Clint kept an eye out for pursuit. It was daylight, so as long as they stayed in the sun they should be safe from supernatural attack. Boda was nowhere to be seen, though. Likely he was a vampire who had hired his own hive as security guards. Clint didn’t know what he was doing making deals with HYDRA, but he didn’t like it.

There were other, human, security guards. They caught up to Natasha and Clint outside the house, on their way to the S.H.I.E.L.D. surveillence unit. Clint and Natasha took them down easy, then ran to check the van. 

It was empty.

Clint closed his eyes. Coulson would never leave them on an active op. If the van was empty, that meant Boda had gotten to him. 

He had been attacked by vampires, and he hadn’t known how to defend himself, because Clint had never taught him. 

“He’s alive.”

Natasha’s words snapped him out of the dark place he was in. “How do you know?” 

She pointed to a spot of tacky blood on the floor of the van. Clint followed her gaze and, now that he was looking, spotted the obvious signs of a struggle. Of course, Boda must have figured out what they'd taken. Someone at the house must have reported back, and Boda had kidnapped Coulson to force an exchange. Coulson wouldn’t have gone easily.

But this was no standard mafia they were dealing with, this wasn’t even just HYDRA. “They’re vampires, Nat,” Clint told her. “They don’t have to kill him – they can turn him and get all the information they need.”

Nat looked like she had questions she wanted him to answer, but must have realized they didn't have that kind of time. Accepting his words at face value, she said, “Then we’ll have to find him first.”

Clint looked into her steady gaze and took a deep breath. She was right, of course. It wasn’t hopeless. They were trained S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives, and this was Coulson they were talking about. He might not have known what he was fighting, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have left them clues. 

Clint nodded and they fanned out. Natasha found a few more blood droplets leading south, and Clint found one of Coulson’s shoes. After that, the trail dried up. Nat said they could have tossed him in a car, but Clint shook his head. He recognized the area. He had spent some time here in... what was it? The 1820’s? Sometime around then. Most of the layout hadn’t changed.

“No, there’s a nest down here somewhere. We never actually saw the mark, right? I bet Boda's a vampire too, and the mansion is just for show. The file we got is HYDRA all right, but he isn’t. He’s here, which means Coulson is, too.”

Nat shot him a look, but shrugged and glanced around. “Okay. What are we looking for then?”

“Nests are underground, someplace the sun won’t get in. They’re usually near seedy locations, where the vampires can feed without the population getting suspicious. Look for a bar or a sewer entrance or something..."

“There,” Nat said, and pointed. Clint followed her gaze and grinned. They rushed forward.

The sewer entrance was a grate next to an ancient building with a pitiful, faltering, neon-green sign. Nat picked the lock and broke in, and Clint followed her down. The sewer widened as soon as they got inside. The darkness was absolute, but they were used to moving in the absence of light.

It took longer than Clint liked, but they managed to find their way into the Budapest underground. Clint moved half on instinct and half on memory. He led them down, down, down, and finally to an open room with flickering candlelight. Sure enough, the place was crawling with vampires, and Coulson was in the middle of them – strung up on the wall with chains and rope.

Clint and Natasha hid in the shadows. Coulson didn’t look good, but he wasn’t dead yet. He was pale, and the vampires had obviously fed on him because there was blood at his neck and his wrists. Clint felt anger cloud his vision, but Natasha’s hand on his elbow kept him from rushing to attack. They had to wait for the right opportunity. 

It came when Boda arrived, a tall, imposing man with a thick shock of black hair. He was a vampire, as Clint had suspected, and when he stepped into the lair every head turned in his direction.

"Enough of this," Boda declared to the room at large. "We will make the human one of us, then he will tell us everything he knows."

Clint tensed with his bow in his hand. He knew how dangerous Coulson could be, and he couldn’t imagine S.H.I.E.L.D. would be happy that a level seven agent had been turned.

But more than that, Clint felt cold at the idea of Coulson losing his soul. It struck him, suddenly, why he had never gone and got himself vamped. He told himself he was afraid of ending up as some lesser childe of a third-rate vampire clan, but the truth, Clint realized staring at Coulson, was that somewhere in the dark corner of his mind, he'd realized how much he'd lost during his centuries as the vampire Penn.

He hadn't been a very good human. His father had beat him and the one thing he loved – archery – had never been enough. He'd craved connection, even then, and that was why, he now realized, he had gone with Angelus when he offered him more.

With his Sire, Clint had felt himself as part of a family. Angelus had beaten him, though, the same as his father had. He hadn't loved him. Darla, Dru, Spike – they hadn't loved him either.

Waking up at Wolfram & Hart, being given a second chance on life, that had been an _opportunity_. He'd tried to seize it his first time around, as Brian Gamble with Jim Street and S.W.A.T., but he'd failed. That failure had driven him to seek the death – the oblivion – that he craved.

When death had rejected him, he'd tried again with Connie. She settled him, saved him, but she couldn't combat the fear. He'd have to protect her, have to shield her, and their son – that had been the final straw. He couldn't be responsible for another life, a child he'd probably destroy as his own father had destroyed him. To be responsible for a life so hopelessly weak – no. He couldn't do it. He'd never be able to cope. 

It was only here, now, with Natasha and with Coulson, that he had found what he had spent the past two and a half centuries searching for. A family. A team. Two people who could look after themselves, who didn't need him but chose to stay with him anyway. Two people who took his fear away, who made the nightmares leave him alone. With them he had found a connection that he wasn't willing to let die.

Natasha caught his eye. Clint didn’t know what she could see on his face, but she held his gaze until he met it, and together they waited while the vampire horde howled and turned towards Coulson. Then, in a blur, Clint and Natasha attacked.

Clint stepped away from their hiding place and began to shoot. Every hit was a kill shot, vampires bursting into ash all around them as Clint’s wooden arrowheads struck heart after heart. Natasha went in low and fast, dodging under his shots and coming in close, stabbing her wooden knife with bluring speed. 

The vampires never saw them coming. They never expected humans to fight with such skill, or such speed. If they’d had an instant to prepare they would have overwhelmed them both, but by the time they realized they were under attack, half of Boda's horde was ash.

Clint killed Boda first. He’d learned some things during his second life.

Coulson’s head was rolling on his neck by the time they finished the last vampire and ran towards him. He was nearly unconscious, having lost so much blood, but he found the strength to peer up at them through half-lidded eyes and smile. 

“My heroes...”

Clint huffed out a laugh that might have a sob. He held Coulson while Nat picked his locks, and caught him when he would have fallen. “Never had a family before, sir. I can't let the one I've got go that easily."

Coulson looked as if he were trying to hold his eyes. He mumbled something Clint’s weak human ears couldn't catch. 

“What?” Clint asked

Natasha took Coulson’s other side. “Medical treatment now,” she growled, “heartfelt declarations later.”

Clint huffed at her, but agreed. Together hauled Coulson back to the surface, lifting him directly when he finally passed out. They had only basic medical supplies at the safe house – Clint started an IV while Nat confirmed Coulson’s blood type with S.H.I.E.L.D. She then raided a nearby hospital, and returned with several bags of blood. 

Clint knew she wanted to ask him questions, but held off until Coulson was out of danger. He didn’t appear to have many other injuries. After two bags of blood, he was closer to his usual colour.

They let him sleep, and took turns watching the door. Clint didn’t think any of the horde had gotten away, but they didn’t know what kind of other arrangments Boda had made. There was still HYDRA to think of. Nat had the folder tucked away in her bag.

By the time Coulson woke up the next morning and Clint had fetched them each a cup of coffee, though, the time for explainations had obviously come.

Natasha and Coulson didn’t say anything, but they waited while Clint paced the safe room floor. 

He didn't know how to tell them this. How could you tell someone they were the reason life held any kind of meaning, anymore? How could he articulate the terror he had felt, seeing Coulson held by vampires and realizing he and Natasha were everything he had been searching for, for over two hundred years?

“Are the cameras off?” he finally asked.

Coulson nodded. “This safe house has suffered a catastrophic failure of communication, which is why we are currently on-route to a secondary safe house and will contact S.H.I.E.L.D. when we arrive.”

Clint nodded jerkily. He put down his coffee and ran a hand through his hair. “The official story,” he said, “that you can put on record, is that I saw weird shit in the circus. Barney didn’t go missing – he was turned. I had to kill him, and have known about vampires ever since.”

Natasha nodded. Coulson took a deep breath, and Clint looked at him. He expected anger at the obvious lie, but instead Coulson looked sad. “Somehow, I suspect the truth is even worse.”

Clint huffed a laugh and closed his eyes. He stopped pacing. “Yeah,” he agreed. He took a deep breath. “The truth is, I was born in 1757 and turned in 1786. I roamed Europe, China, and the Americas as a vampire until I was dusted in the year 2000 by my Sire, Angelus.”

He opened his eyes and looked at his audience. Natasha didn’t say anything – her face was as expressionless as a statue. She was clearly waiting for him to finish before she decided if she believed him or not. Coulson, on the other hand, had his thinking face on. “Is that the real reason you’ve never seen the cartoon version of _Captain America and the Howling Commandos_?”

Clint laughed and dropped his head into his hands. “Yeah,” he said, his voice muffled. He cleared his throat and looked up. “Yeah, it is.” 

He gave them both a brief history of the past decade, of coming back to himself in the basement of Wolfram & Hart, of his life as Gamble, and then as James. He told them of Connie, of the baby he felt no connection to, of the life he had tried to live.

"What I wanted," Clint said into the silence that followed, "was a family to care about. To connect me to this world, to give my remaining decades _purpose_. I've died and come back so many times now, that I can only hope that eventually, because I'm aging, the Powers will finally let me die. I'd thought I'd spend that time alone, fighting the nightmares, until I met you two."

Nat stared at him. "You want me not only to believe in vampires – which I have at least seen with my own eyes – but in magic and resurrection, too?"

Clint licked his lips. He held her eyes. "I want you to believe in nothing. I want to burn Budapest to the ground and pretend the past two days never happened."

Natasha held his gaze. "But they did."

Clint nodded. "They did."

"You would not have told me this otherwise?"

"No," Clint admitted. "I don't... I didn't want you to know. You say you have blood on your hands, Nat, but you don't understand – I've killed so many people and cared so very little that nothing can absolve me of that. I'm not even looking for absolution – I never have."

Coulson looked up from where he had been staring at the floor. “You’ve never told S.H.I.E.L.D. any of this."

“And I never want to,” Clint agreed. “Wolfram & Hart – they have people everywhere. I can’t be sure that they won’t find me if S.H.I.E.L.D. knows my story. What they did to me – I don’t think they meant to do it. The other vampire they brought back, Darla, she died. She got turned again and she died, and she hasn’t come back. As far as I know, I’m unique. Wolfram & Hart... they like unique things. They’d give a lot to have me back.”

Coulson’s gaze went far away, and he nodded. “That does sound reasonable.”

Clint couldn’t help it – he laughed. “What the fuck about any of this sounds _reasonable_?”

Coulson’s lips quirked into a quiet smile. “I was just kidnapped by vampires and fed upon. There was talk of turning me. They asked questions about how much S.H.I.E.L.D. knows, and how much we’ve told HYDRA. It seems quite obvious to me there is a supernatural element at play we hadn’t known existed before.”

Clint stared at him. “So you believe me?”

Coulson shrugged. “We will have to confirm your story, and I want to look closely into the alias you’ve given up, but yes, Clint,” he held his gaze. “I believe you.”

Clint didn’t know how to feel about that. He looked to Natasha. 

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “Part of me wants to stab you through the heart and see if you come back again like you claim.”

Coulson didn’t look surprised. Clint took off his shirt. “You can totally go for it,” he told her.

Natasha watched him. She had a knife in her hand, Clint could see. After a minute, though, she shook her head. “Whatever else you’ve done, or lied about, you’ve saved my life. I can’t kill you now.”

Clint stared at her, then blinked. “You really can,” he pressed. “I want to – I feel like I need to prove it to you.”

She put the knife away. “No, you don’t. We are friends, and more than than we are, if what you are saying is true, your family. We should trust each other.”

Unexpectedly, Clint felt tears catch in his throat. "I never thought I'd find you guys. I didn't realize I'd been so alone."

Natasha smiled. It was small, but it was real. “I know.”

Clint blinked away his blurry vision and looked towards Coulson. “I guess we should go to this secondary safe house, then?”

Coulson nodded and started to gather their things. “Yes, we should.”

They moved, completed their paperwork, and were back on American soil within three days. Life, strangely enough, went back to normal. Natasha and Clint still sparred, and Coulson still sent them on missions. There was no more talk of vampires, or Clint’s unsually long lifespan. There were a series of high-level, closed-door meetings Clint was not invited to, and Fury glared at him a lot whenever he saw Clint in the hall, but mostly nothing changed. 

Except for his relationship with Coulson and Natasha. They had always been good to him, but now they were better. They began to spend their time off together. Coulson drove them to Coney Island and Natasha taught him Russian. They watched _Captain America and the Howling Commandos_ and Clint learned what family – what real family – could be like.

He had never experienced this before. It was like nothing of his days with his father, or his centuries with Angelus and his horde. It was better than being alone and forgotten in Italy, better than his time in L.A. as Gamble. It was miles above the relationship he'd had with Connie, or the thin companionship he'd felt with his squad in the Army.

It was _family_ , real family. 

It was amazing.

The world was getting weirder, though. Clint heard some grumbling on the supernatural scene, and now he kept Natasha and Coulson in the loop. They had a little bit of warning when Tony Stark was kidnapped, but not enough to do anything about it. Coulson was dispatched to debrief him when Iron Man appeared, and Nat was sent in when Banner got himself blasted by gamma rays and turned into a raging green monster. They both confessed to Clint later that the occurances were unusual, but not – so far as they could tell – supernatural in origin. 

Clint was never brought in on the Iron Man mission, but he was sent with Coulson when the meteor that looked more like a hammer landed in New Mexico. The Powers at work there were not the Powers Clint was used to, though. He was in the dark as much as Coulson on that one.

He didn’t get invited to the Artic when S.H.I.E.L.D. found Captain America. Coulson was nearly giddy with excitement and Clint watched him pack for the expedition with a scowl on his face.

He was jealous, Clint realized, when he had to restrain himself from punching the wall the minute Coulson left. He had never cared enough about someone enough to be jealous, before.

Natasha figured it out the moment she set eyes on him and promptly kidnapped him for the weekend to grill him about his feelings for Coulson. They had been spending more time together lately, Clint had to admit to her. Not dating, exactly, but Coulson would invite Clint over to his apartment and they would watch old movies together. They didn't always invite Natasha. Clint hadn't realized how much he'd relished the time he spent alone with the other man, or how much the thought of losing it scared him.

Natasha and Coulson were family, now, but it could be – it must be – that with Coulson, Clint wanted _more_.

Clint had never been good at relationships – he hadn’t had practice while he was alive the first time around, and the thing with Connie was a disaster through and through. He still thought about their kid, sometimes, but mostly he'd let that life go. Connie and the baby were both provided for – his death as William James in honourable combat would have seen to that, on top of the bank account he'd left them. He had no interest in becoming a part of their life. 

With Coulson, though, things were different. Clint began to wake up from dreams of kissing him, began to wonder at all the things he could do with a man, things he’d never even thought of before. He’d had sex with men as a vampire, occaisonally, even with Angelous now and then, but it hadn’t been something he’d particularly enjoyed. Then again, he hadn’t even enjoyed sex with women, back in the day. As a vampire, sex was just another way of controlling people. Angelous had taught him that.

But now, with Coulson, it felt different. Clint _wanted_ it to be different.

He wasn’t sure what Coulson felt, though, and he was too chicken-shit to ask. When he returned from the Artic, Coulson went back to inviting Clint over to his apartment, and Clint brought him lunch at the office sometimes. Natasha pushed him to say something, but Clint didn't know how. What they had was so important to him. Should he dare risk it? 

Eventually, though, S.H.I.E.L.D. made a breakthrough on the cube research it had been doing, and things changed again. 

Clint was sent to the Pegasus facility to keep an eye on the developments. Fury had mostly stopped glaring at him by this point and seemed to count Clint’s experience as a resource. Clint watched the scientists and he watched the cube, but apart from a nagging feeling that something wasn’t right, he couldn’t find anything to point to. 

Things got worrisome enough that Coulson was called in, though. He shared Clint’s apprehension. When the cube started misbehaving, Fury came to call. Coulson led the evacuation and Clint stayed by the Director's side. The cube erupted, Loki appeared, and Clint tried to fight him off.

He failed.

Loki took one look at him and saw everything Clint had to hide. His saw his past, what he really was, and what he was capable of doing. He pressed his staff against Clint’s chest and said low, into his ear, “You have heart.”

Clint wanted to disagree with him. He wanted to protest that he didn’t have a heart, that he never had, that he’d killed too many people without guilt to have any kind of conscience left, but he could feel the lie of it beating in his chest. He’d always wanted too much to be completely without love.

Now, he knew his heart, and just when it was finally his own, Loki took it. 

Clint became Loki’s. If he'd still had his demon, he might have been able to fight his way free, but the blue power overwhelmed his fragile human soul. No matter how much he screamed, he couldn’t fight his way clear. Eventually, he stopped trying. He did what Loki wanted, when Loki wanted it, and the only reason he didn’t kill himself with exhaustion and lack of food was because it would have taken too long for him to come back and still complete Loki’s plan.

Something happened on the Helicarrier, though. Loki was injured, and it weakened his control enough that Natasha’s round house kick snapped the lingering thread that bound Clint to his mind. Clint woke to a world of shifting reds and greens, but no residual blue. 

“Can you fly a quinjet?” Captain America asked, and Clint said that he could. He needed to do something to fight back. Rogers nodded and Clint joined the team, killing aliens and doing his best to take out Loki, joining the team for shawarma when they somehow all survived.

It was only then Natasha told him about Coulson. She waited until she obviously couldn’t put it off any longer. Clint listened to her without saying anything, and then walked out of the restaurant and vomited in the alley.

Coulson was... Coulson _was_...

Clint held his head for a long time, trying to work through the gnawing emptiness in his chest. Eventually, he stood up and left. He didn’t bother asking Fury for leave, but he did write a note to Natasha. It said, “I’m going to get Coulson back” and “I know a guy.”

Clint flew to L.A.

It was hard to get a working flight, but he still had connections. When he landed, he didn’t bother sneaking around. He called a cab and walked right into the main entrance of Wolfram & Hart.

“I need to speak to a Senior Partner.”

“I’m sorry,” said the lovely looking woman at the reception desk, “but you don’t have an appointment.”

“My name is Clinton Francis Pennington Barton,” Clint said firmly. “I don’t need an appointment.”

The receptionist made a phone call, and then a slightly older woman with lush dark skin and a three-piece suit walked into the lobby. “Mr. Barton?” she asked in a voice like smooth honey. “This way, please.”

Clint followed her into an elevator, and wasn’t surprised when it stopped between floors. The doors opened onto a brilliant white room, with no walls and no definition. Clint stepped inside, and the woman followed.

“State your business,” a disembodied voice demanded. 

“I have come to bargin for the life of one man,” Clint said as bravely as he could. “His name is Philip Coulson, and he works for the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.”

There was a moment of silence, and then the voice spoke. “We know who he is. He is dead.”

Clint’s jaw clenched. “He is. I want his body healed, and his soul returned to it.”

“That is difficult to do,” the voice replied. “He was killed with a magical object not from this dimension. The Powers that Be are in dispute about who has claim to his soul. We would pay dearly for the right to return it.”

Clint shook his head. “You would be solving a quandry – Coulson is mortal, and will die again. It is unlikely he will die via the spear, which would remove the other Powers from the equation. This dimension would be the only one with command over his soul.”

There was another moment of silence, and then the voice agreed. “You speak sense, but the price is still high. What do you offer?”

Clint swallowed and stepped forward. “Myself. You – or Wolfram & Hart – brought me back as a human, but I have died many times since then. I return to my body, live and change and grow old, then die, over and over again, only to return.”

The woman behind him shifted. “That is unexpected.” 

“Very unexpected,” the white room replied. It sounded curious. Clint waited. Eventually, the voice spoke. “Very well. We accept your surrender. You must promise, however, never to escape.”

“I promise never to attempt an escape,” Clint agreed. He turned to face the woman. “Where do you –”

He never had a chance to finish. The white light of the room grew and overwhelmed him. Clint blinked and found himself strapped to a table, with men and women in suits all around him.

“Lets begin with the simplist incision,” one of the men said. He pulled a scapel.

Clint screamed.

He tried not to – he did – but they didn’t want words or information, they simply wanted him to die. They killed him over and over and over again increasingly painful ways. They blew him up, electrocuted him, cut off his head, and stabbed him through the heart. They measured the energy that was released when he died, and the wavelengths he put out when alive. They made notes about how long it took him to come back, and observed the process in a hundred different ways, a hundred different times.

Clint lost track of time, of meaning, of self. He realized, dimly, that they were trying to break him. He wondered if they had succeeded.

Finally, eventually, it ended. Clint blinked and came back to himself to realize there were other people in the room, two individuals he recognized. Natasha’s expression was carved in stone. Coulson looked calm.

“... negotiated for his release, with the information provided.”

Clint tried to focus, but realized they had cut off one ear this time. The woman in a suit said something, and then turned and plunged the knife into his chest. He gurgled around the blood that filled his lungs, and saw Natasha snarl and leap at the woman, and then he died.

Again.

He came back.

Clint didn’t know how long he’d been out for – mutilation didn’t seem to affect the resurection, but he had lost all sense of time by now. When he blinked himself awake, he was in the back of a moving van, and Natasha was holding his hand.

“What...” Clint tried. “How... ?”

“Shhh,” Natasha said to him. There were tears in her eyes, but she still looked angry. “Not now, _драгоценная_. Wait a little longer, please.”

Natasha had never said please to him before in his life. Clint nodded and did as she asked. He tried to twist around and see who was driving, but he found it difficult to move. He was so tired. Wolfram and Hart hadn't seemed interested in feeding him, and though he always came back whole, how he’d been living before his death seemed to affect him.

Finally, they reached a safe house. Clint didn’t know what city they were in, but Natasha helped him from the van. The driver’s side door clicked open and then shut, and Clint looked up to see Coulson walking towards them.

He felt his knees give out, relief making him sag. “It worked,” Clint breathed, taking in the sight of him. “They kept their word.”

“They did,” Coulson agreed. He looked angry, but Clint didn’t care. He was _alive_. “Let’s get you inside.”

The house was small, but well stocked. The sounds of traffic floated up from the streets and the writing on the cans was in english. They could have been in L.A., New York, or Chicago. Coulson and Nat both helped him to bed, and then sat with him until he fell asleep. Clint slept deep, and awoke feeling ravenous. Coulson brought him food.

“Chicken soup to start,” Coulson said firmly, “and then, if you're feeling up to it and don’t puke on my shoes, some bread.”

“Sounds heavenly,” Clint said. He took a sip, and then stopped. He looked up at Coulson. “Is that... where you were?”

He hadn’t wanted to think about it, before. Bringing Coulson back had been the only important thing to him – visions of hell dimensions danced in his head, but he knew, he had to admit, that the possibility existed for Coulson going the other way. If anyone deserved it, it was him.

Coulson’s gaze went out of focus, but he shook his head. “No,” he said finally. “It was a possibility, but there were... complications. Asgardian Powers and... whatever else there is in this world, seemed in contention.”

Clint swallowed his soup. “But they brought you back.”

Coulson nodded. “They brought me back.” He hesitated, then looked at Clint. “I don’t have to ask why you went through that for me, do I?” 

Clint swallowed, but it didn’t sound like a question. It sounded like he already knew the answer.

“You just... have to be," Clint tried. “You have to exist.” He shook his head. “I don’t, I’ve never loved anybody before, Coulson, but... even if you send me away, or kill me, or report me to S.H.I.E.L.D. You have to know – I would do anything for you.”

“I think,” Coulson said slowly, “that you already have.” He reached out and took Clint’s hand, then hesitated, and put his other palm against Clint’s face. Clint closed his eyes and turned his head into that warmth. It felt like the Afghani sun. 

“They didn’t want to let you go,” Coulson told him softly. “I woke in the morgue – Nick took some convincing to believe it was me. When I was free to go, I went to Stark Tower. I’m sorry to say that I betrayed your secret to the team. The Avengers know who you are now, or rather, how many people you have been.”

Clint kept his eyes closed. “What did they say?”

“They were upset, at first, I think because you acted on your own initiative to get me back without consulting them. Stark was quite distressed to find out that magic was real – he’s still throwing random fits about it, as if Loki wasn’t enough to convince him. He and Banner were the ones who came through, though. They managed to hack their way into Wolfram and Hart, at least far enough to get the information we required.”

“What information was that?”

“The pieces of the puzzle to negotiate your release. We couldn’t find a copy of the spell used to bring you back, but we found notes about the process. Banner thinks, and Stark agrees, that the reason you keep coming back is because the spell tied your soul to this plane. The only way to break that connection is through another magical means – the most common being turned by a vampire. You mentioned there was another woman they brought back after you?”

Clint nodded. “Darla, my grandsire.”

“Yes. I used S.H.I.E.L.D. resources to match her name and face. She reappeared in the greater L.A. area and then vanished again. Wolfram and Hart seemed to think she’d been turned.”

“She was. Dru came back for her, and then Angel took care of them both. I think. I wasn’t here for the showdown. I ran away.”

“I’m glad you did,” Coulson said. “From what I understand, they wreaked quite the level of destruction before they were neutralized.”

Clint took a deep breath and sat up, trying to sort this out. “So, you’re saying that the only reason Darla didn’t die and come back was because Druscilla turned her first? She released her soul?”

Coulson pinched his lips together. “We think so. You age because your body is human, but when you die your soul brings you back. Wolfram and Hart found this information useful, and we exchanged it for your release.” He heistated. “I have no idea what will happen as you get older.”

“I had hoped,” Clint confessed, “that the Powers would let me die. I thought by then they might have forgiven me.”

“I’m not convinced they wouldn’t,” Coulson said, slowly. “I don’t remember my time among them with any certainty, but I’m sure there are some with compassion. I don’t know if it would be enough, though.”

“But from what you've said there's another option. I could just get vamped and then have someone ready to end me when I rise" Clint licked his lips. "I could do it. I could die!”

Coulson smiled. “I’ve never seen someone so excited by the prospect, but I suppose that with all you’ve lived through, you deserve the right to know it will end.”

Clint grinned at him. “Fucking right I do.”

Coulson laughed. 

“So, the team,” Clint went on, feeling nervous now. “They know?”

Coulson nodded. “They do. They still want you back, Clint. We all do.”

Clint swallowed. “I never thought I’d have any of this,” he confessed. “I didn’t even know how to _want_ it, not for a long time. I do now, though. Losing you – I never want to go through that again.”

“I can’t promise anything,” Coulson admitted, “but I want to try. For you. _With_ you, if you'll have me.”

“There's nothing I want more” Clint told him. He licked his lips. “I’ve done things, though,” he warned, "not only as a vampire, but as a man. I’ve done a lot of very bad things, Coulson.”

“I have, too,” Coulson agreed. “Heaven was not the only option available to me, nor Valhalla.” He smiled. “And I think, after this, you can call me Phil.”

Clint couldn’t help but smile back. “Phil,” he said, trying the name on his lips. “I could get used to Phil.”

“I hope so,” Phil said. He leaned in and kissed him.

Natasha found them a few minutes later, wrapped around each other. She rolled her eyes, but smiled. Clint flipped her off and pulled Phil closer. They didn’t move.

Not for a very long time. 

 

The End

 

 

 

Translation:

драгоценная – precious one


End file.
